
Class {(p Lqeff 



Book 



Copyright K°__/^LZ, 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



FOREST NEIGHBORS 



FOREST 
NEIGHBORS 



BY 

WILLIAM DAVENPORT HURLBERT 



SKB® 



ROW, PETERSON & COMPANY 

CHICAGO NEW YORK 









Copyright, 1915 
EOW, PETERSON & COMPANY 



NOV 18 1915 



9CU414898 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

The Story of Split-Hoof ..... 15 

The Beavek and the Two Cities ... 79 

pointers from a porcupine quill . . 135 

A Kitten of the "Woods . . . . . 185 



INTRODUCTION 

Some thirty years ago, while out on one of his 
landlooking trips in the woods oi Northern Michigan, 
my father came upon a little lake which seemed 
to him the loveliest that he had ever seen, though 
he had visited many in the course of his explorations. 
The wild ponds are very likely to be shallow and 
muddy, with low, marshy shores; but this one was 
deep and clear, and its high banks were clothed with 
a splendid growth of beech, maple, and birch. Tall 
elms stood guard along the water's edge, and here 
and there the hardwood forest was broken by dark 
hemlock groves, and groups of lordly pine trees, 
lifting their great green heads high above their 
deciduous neighbors. Only in one place, around the 
extreme eastern end, the ground was wet and flat; 
and there the tamarack swamp showed golden yellow 
in October, and light, delicate green in late spring. 
Wild morning-glories grew on the grassy point that 
put out from the northern shore, and in the bays the 
white water-lilies were blossoming. Nearly two miles 
long and three-quarters of a mile wide, it lay basking 
and shimmering in the sunshine, a big, broad, beau- 
tiful sheet of water set down in the very heart of 
the woods. 

There were no settlers anywhere near, nor even 



8 Introduction 

any Indians, yet there was no lack of inhabitants. 
Bears and wolves and a host of smaller animals were 
to be found, and along the shores w r ere runways that 
had been worn deep in the soil by the tread of 
generation after generation of dainty little cloven 
hoofs. I suppose that some of those paths have 
been used by the deer for hundreds, and perhaps 
thousands, of years. 

The lands around the lake were offered for sale 
by the United States Government at the ridiculously 
low price which Uncle Sam has asked for most of 
his possessions; and with the help of some friends 
my father bought the whole shore. During the years 
which followed he was occupied in various ways, 
and some of the best recollections of my boyhood are 
of the days and the nights which I spent w T ith him 
on his fishing-tug, steaming about the Straits of 
Mackinac and the northern part of Lake Huron. 
But he could not forget the Glimmerglass, that little 
wild lake up in the woods. He had fallen in love 
with it at first sight, and at last he took his family 
and w 7 ent there to live. 

Human neighbors were scarce around the lake, and 
perhaps that was one reason why we took such a 
lively interest in the other residents — those who 
were ahead of us. " Him and me's chums," my 
small sister said of the red-squirrel that hung around 
the log-barn. And some of the animals seemed to 
take a very lively interest in us. The chipmunks 
came into the house occasionally, on foraging expedi- 



Introduction 9 

tions; and so, I regret to say, did the skunks. There 
was a woodchuck who used to come to the back door, 
looking for scraps, and who learned to sit bolt 
upright and hold a pancake in his fore paws while 
he nibbled at it, without being in the least disturbed 
by the presence and comments of half a dozen 
spectators. The porcupines became a never-ending 
nuisance, for they made almost nightly visits to the 
wood-pile. To kill them was of little use, for the 
next night — or perhaps before morning — there were 
others to take their places. Once in a while one of 
them would climb up onto the roof of the house ; and 
betw r een his teeth and his feet and the rattling of 
his quills on the shingles, the racket that he made 
was out of all proportion to his size. 

It is sweet to lie at evening in your little trundle-bed, 
And listen to a porky gnawing shingles overhead; 
Porky, porky, porky, porky; 
Gnawing shingles overhead. 

The wolves had been pretty nearly exterminated 
since my father's first visit to the lake, and we saw 
little or nothing of them. The bears seemed to be 
more numerous, but they were very shy and retiring. 
We found their tracks more often than we came 
upon the animals themselves. Some of the cat tribe 
remained, and occasionally placed themselves in 
evidence. My brother came in one day from a long 
tramp on snow-shoes, and told how he had met one 



10 Introduction 

of them standing guard over the remains of a deer, 
and how the lynx had held him up and made him 
go around. Beavers were getting scarce, though a 
few were still left on the more secluded streams. 
Deer, on the contrary, were very plentiful. Many 
a time they invaded our garden-patch and helped 
themselves to our fresh vegetables. 

One August afternoon a flock of eight young 
partridges, of that spring's hatching, coolly marched 
out of the woods and into the clearing, as if they 
were bent on investigating their new neighbors. 
Partridges appear to be subject to occasional fits of 
stupidity, and to temporary (or possibly permanent) 
loss of common sense ; but it may be that in this case 
the birds were too young and inexperienced to 
realize what they were doing. Or perhaps they 
knew that it was Sunday, and that the rules of the 
household forbade shooting on that day. If so, 
their confidence was sadly misplaced. We didn't 
shoot them, but we did surround them, and by work- 
ing carefully and cautiously we " shooed " them into 
an empty log-house. And the next day we had them 
for dinner. 

Around the shores of the Glimmerglass a few 
loons and wild-ducks usually nested, and in the 
autumn the large flocks from the Far North often 
stopped there for short visits, on their way south 
for the winter. 

They were more sociable than you would suppose 
— or at least the loons were — and the same small 



Introduction 11 

girl who had made friends with the red-squirrel 
learned to talk to the big birds. 

One after another onr neighbors introduced them- 
selves, each in his own way. And they were good 
neighbors, all of them. Even the porcupines and the 
skunks w r ere interesting — in their peculiar fashion — 
and I wish there were none worse than they in the 
city's slums. 

I have said goodby to the Glimmerglass, and it 
may be that I shall never again make my home by 
its shores. But the life of the woods goes on, and 
will still go on as long as man will let it. I suppose 
that, even as I w T rite, the bears are " holeing up ' 
for the winter, and the deer are growing anxious 
because the snow is covering the best of their food, 
and they of the cat tribe are getting dow T n to business 
and hunting in deadly earnest. The loons and the. 
ducks have pulled out for the Gulf of Mexico, and 
the squirrels are glad that they have such a goodly 
store of nuts laid up for the next four months. The 
beavers have retired to their lodges — that is, if 
Aleck and the trappers have left any of them alive. 
The partridges — well, the partridges w 7 ill just have 
to get along the best way they can. I guess they'll 
pull through somehow. The porcupines are all right, 
as you will presently see if you read this book. They 
don't have to worry. Down in the bed of the trout 
stream the trout eggs are getting ready — getting 
ready. And out on the lake itself the frost is at 
work, and the ice-sheet is forming, and under that 



12 Introduction 

cold, white lid the Glimmerglass will wait till another 
year brings round another spring time — the spring 
time that will surely come to all of us if only we 
hold on long enough. 
Chicago, December, 1901. 



AN ADDITIONAL NOTE 

By the Red- Squirrel's Chum 

So far as I can remember my brother never 
re-visited the Glimmerglass, although he did not lose 
his love for the woods and the water, and the 
creatures that live in them. Many a never-to-be- 
forgotten day have I spent with him during summer 
vacations, cruising about on St. Mary's River in a 
little launch named the Sadden Sinker. 

It is now just a year since the Spring Time came 
to my brother. Forty-five years he had lived, and 
forty-three of those years he had been " holding 
on" — for he was a cripple. Physically, he never 
knew the activity of childhood or the strength of 
manhood; he went to school for only a year or two. 
But he read and read, and lived outdoors, and no 
one ever heard him complain of his condition. 

At the time of his death he was engaged upon the 
revision of " Forest Neighbors, " in order that it 
might better be used as a school text-book. The 
story of ' ' Split-Hoof ' ' was complete ; the other 
stories, about the Beaver, the Porcupine and the 



Introduction 13 

Lynx, I have tried to adapt in like manner, but 
with indifferent success, since it is impossible to 
imitate a style that was wholly his own, both by 
natural gifts and by years of hard work. But it 
may be that I shall at least have carried out his 
desire — that these real stories of real animal life 
should become familiar to thousands of school 
children. 

Frances Hulbert Earig. 
Seattle, Washington. 
November, 1914. 




The Story of Split-Hoof 

NCE upon a time there was a 
buck who w r as the largest and 
strongest and handsomest deer 
in all the woods. 

He was not quite perfect. One of his 
antlers was deformed, and the toes of his 
left hind foot were spread too far apart, 
so that his track w^as different from the 
tracks of other deer. Pretty soon you 
shall hear how it happened. But these 
things were not very serious, and in every 
other way he was the finest deer in the 
forest. 

He was born in the springtime. Fawns 
are always born in spring, but he came a 
little earlier than most of them. And that 
was lucky, because it made the summer 
longer and gave him more time to grow 

15 



16 Forest Neighbors 

before the winter came. If there had been 
any late frosts or snow-storms it would 
have been very bad. Perhaps he would 
even have died of cold. Sometimes fawns 
do. But that spring was very pleasant. 
The sun shone every day for weeks 
together, and he had an easy, comfortable 
time. 

Then, too, his mother was a very fine, 
large doe, and that year he was her only 
baby. Sometimes fawns are twins, and 
then their mothers cannot take as good 
care of them, but that spring he was the 
only one. She looked after him very care- 
fully, and he w T as a very fine child indeed. 

If you had seen him when he was a few 
weeks old you would have said that he 
was perfectly beautiful. His coat was a 
sort of brownish-red, a little like a bay 
horse, but brighter and richer. All along 
his back and sides were round white spots, 
about as big as five-cent pieces. His hair 
was short, and it lay so smooth that he 



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18 Forest Neighbors 

fairly glistened in the sunshine. His eyes 
were dark and very large and bright, and 
his ears were almost as big as a mule's, 
and about a million times as pretty. 

But his mother never tried to show him 
off before the other animals. She knew it 
was better to keep him hidden as long as 
she could, and not let any one know she 
had him. And so, at first, she did not 
even take him with her when she went 
to look for food, but left him lying in a 
thicket, or behind a bush or a log. There 
he spent many long, lonely hours, with 
nothing to do but watch the trees and 
the bushes, and listen to the wind in the 
branches. But he did not mind it, for he 
was too young to be lonesome. 

One of the very first days he saw a red 
squirrel and a chipmunk playing close by. 
He did not know what they were, and 
he did not pay any attention to them. 
Another day he saw a partridge and her 
little ones, and once a rabbit came and 



The Story of Split-Hoof 19 

sat beside him for a minute or two. And 
then, one afternoon, he saw a bear. It 
was lucky that the bear did not see him. 

And now I am going to tell you a 
strange thing. The fawn was not afraid 
of any of these animals, for he did not 
know anything at all about them. He 
did not know whether they were friends 
or enemies. But w r hen he was a week 
or two older he saw that bear again, and 
this time he trembled and crouched low, 
with his nose close to the ground and 
his ears laid back on his neck. And the 
strange part of it was that nobody had 
told him to be afraid of bears, but he 
knew without being told. It was instinct. 

And another day a big gray Canada 
lynx came creeping through the bushes 
and gave him a terrible scare. The bear 
never saw the fawn at all, but the lynx 
saw him and wanted him for dinner. At 
first he squatted close to the ground and 
lay perfectly still. The lynx came closer 



20 Forest Neighbors 

and closer, and at last the fawn jumped 
up and ran for his life. The lynx ran too, 
but the fawn was the faster, and he got 
away. 




But the worst of it was that the young 
deer couldn't find the way back, and when 
his mother came home he wasn't there. 
For a long, long time he w T andered about, 
till he was tired and hungry and cold. 
He didn't know what to do nor where 
to go, and he was terribly lonesome and 
frightened. But at last he heard a little 
sound that made him stop and listen. It 
was only a faint, low, murmuring call, 
but he knew that it was his mother and 
that she was looking for him. He gave 



The Story of Split-Hoof 21 

a little bleat, and he turned and ran to 
her as fast as he could go. 

After that she let him travel with her 
when she went after food, and soon he 
learned about the different kinds of forest. 
There were the dark hemlock groves, 
where the branches were so thick that 
they shut out almost all the light. There 
were the maple woods, where the sunshine 
filtered dow T n through the leaves and filled 
the air with a soft green radiance. There 
were the cedar swamps, where the trees 
were so close together that one could 
hardly get through them. There were the 
tamarack swamps, where they stood wide 
apart, and where the great purple-and- 
white lady's-slippers blossomed in the wet 
grass. There were the cranberry marshes, 
where the pitcher-plants lived, and where 
white-plumed grasses nodded in the breeze. 
There were the sandy ridges where the 
pine trees sang when the wind blew 
through their branches. And there was 



22 Forest Neighbors 

the lake — the broad, beautiful Glimmer- 
glass, rippling and shining in the sun. 
It was a very wonderful world. 

The fawn and his mother did not talk 
to each other very much. Sometimes, 
when she wanted him, she would give 
that same low, murmuring call, and he 
would answer her with that same little 
bleat. But most of the time they did 
not make any sound except the rustling 
of the dry leaves under their feet. And 
yet they were very happy together. He 
kept close to her while she walked about 
and picked up her breakfast, or her dinner, 
or her supper. Then, when she had eaten 
her fill of plants and grasses and leaves 
and twigs, they would lie down in some 
sheltered place, and she would chew her 
cud till it was time to move again. 

Perhaps the most disagreeable things 
in the woods were the mosquitoes, and 
the black-flies, and some other little flies 
that bit and stung like fire. The Indians 



The Story of Split-Hoof 23 

and the trappers called them " no-see- 
'ems/' because they were so small that 
you could hardly see them. They and the 
mosquitoes and the black-flies all came in 
June, and they stayed for several weeks. 
They got into the fawn's mouth and into 
his nose. They gathered in circles around 
his eyes. They snuggled down into his 
hair and sucked the blood out of him till 
it seemed as if he would go dry, Some- 
times they almost drove him crazy. And 
there was no way to get away from them, 
except to take a bath in the lake, or to 
get out of the woods into some open place 
where the wind blew. 

One morning he and his mother went 
down to the beach at the eastern end of 
the Glimmerglass. It was the place they 
liked the best of all. The sand was smooth 
and hard, and the breeze blew the flies and 
.mosquitoes away, so that they could walk 
there in peace. The fawn was always glad 
to go down to the shore. But it was a 



24 Forest Neighbors 

dangerous place, too. It is always dan- 
gerous for a deer to get out into the open, 
where men and other animals can see him 
a long way off. 

The fawn was feeling very gay that 
morning. His tiny pointed hoofs touched 
the sand so lightly that it seemed as if 
he w r ere dancing or walking on the air. 
At every step he thrust his head forward 
and drew it back again, as the birds do. 
Only he did it more daintily and grace- 
fully than the birds. He had never been 
as pretty as he was that day. 

They walked away down to the far end 
of the beach, and then turned and walked 
half-way back. Then they stopped for a 
drink, and pretty soon they started on 
again. They did not know that just a 
little way farther on the big gray Canada 
lynx was crouching under a bush, watch- 
ing them. His eyes glistened, his ears 
twitched, and he fairly trembled with 
eagerness. He was hungry, and he felt 



The Story of Split-Hoof 25 

sure he was going to have the fawn for 
dinner. He was only waiting for them 
to come a little nearer. Then he would 
give a jump and a run, and he would catch 
the fawn and kill him before they knew 
he was coming. They were getting closer 
all the time. Just a minute more. Just 
a minute more, and he would spring. This 
time he would get the fawn. He was 
sure of it. 

But he didn't, for suddenly the Doe 
stopped short. She stamped with her fore- 
foot on the hard sand, and she tossed her 
head and snorted. A little puff of wind 
had come out of the woods and blown 
across the beach towards the water. It 
had brought to her an unpleasant odor. 
It wasn't the lynx that she smelled. It 
was something else — something worse. 
And the fawn snorted and stamped, just 
as his mother did, for he smelled it, too. 
He had never known anything like it 
before, but his instinct told him it was 



26 Forest Neighbors 

something bad. For a moment they stood 
and stared at the bushes. Then they 
wheeled, and away they went like the wind, 
down the beach and into the woods. 

The lynx's eyes grew dull and he turned 
away to look for a squirrel or a rabbit. 

And then, when they were all gone, a 
man came out of the bushes — a tall man 
with a black beard. He was a moss-back 
named Aleck, who lived in a little log 
house not far from the Grlimmerglass. For 
the last five minutes he had been standing 
there in the edge of the woods, watching 
the doe and the fawn. Now he walked 
across the beach to the place where they 
had stood. He looked at the tracks they 
had left in the sand, and he laughed as he 
thought how fast they ran. 

" They were certainly scared," he said 
to himself. 

They certainly were, and for a long 
time they kept away from the beach. 

By the middle of July most of the flies 



The Story of Split-Hoof 27 

and mosquitoes were gone, and they could 
travel where they pleased without being 
eaten alive. And then, almost before they 
knew what had happened, the summer 
was gone too, and the autumn had come. 
The fawn's white spots disappeared. He 
and his mother lost their thin red sum- 
mer suits and put on their winter over- 
coats, which were a different color and 
much thicker and warmer. The hairs were 
so close together that they had to stand 
on end because there wasn't room for 
them all to lie down. They were longer 
and coarser, and blue-gray instead of red. 
With coats like these the deer could sleep 
all night in the snow, and get up in the 
morning dry and comfortable. 

In October the beechnuts fell from the 
trees, and the fawn and his mother feasted 
on them till they were fatter and heartier 
than ever. If you had killed them and 
eaten them you would have found that 
their meat had a very fine, sweet, nutty 



28 Forest Neighbors 

flavor. You would have liked it, I know. 
Some years there are a great many beech- 
nuts in the woods around the Glimmer- 
glass, and some years there are not. That 
fall they were very plentiful. And that 
was another lucky thing for the fawn. 
So much depends on having plenty to eat 
the first year. He was growing faster 
than ever, and already his first antlers 
were pushing through the skin on the top 
of his head. That was a sure sign that he 
was becoming a very fine young deer. 

By this time the nights were cold, but 
the days were warm and bright. It seemed 
the very best time of all the year. And 
then, all of a sudden, things went wrong 
again. It was the hunting season, and 
some farmers came from another part of 
the State to camp beside the Glimmer- 
glass. Every day they took their guns 
and went tramping through the woods, 
looking for something to kill. Every little 
while you heard them shooting. They 



The Story of Split-Hoof 29 

were not really very dangerous. They did 
not know how to hunt, and they made so 
much noise that one could always hear 
them coming. But it was not pleasant to 
have them there, and the fawn and his 
mother left the lake and went to a little 
valley between the hills, several miles 
away. And there they stayed till the 
hunting season was over. 

Bv the first of December the farmers 

«/ 

were gone, and the deer came back to 
the beech trees. There was a little snow 
on the ground, — just an inch or two — 
but they scraped it away with their fore- 
feet, and felt around with their noses, 
and found enough nuts to keep them from 
getting very hungry. 

Then, by and by, another storm came, 
and the snow piled up so deep that they 
could not dig through it. And so they 
left the Glimmerglass again and went 
away to the evergreen swamps by the 
Tahquamenon River. There they lived all 



30 Forest Neighbors 

winter on twigs of balsam and hemlock 
and spruce, with sometimes a mouthful 
of moss or lichens. It wasn't as good as 
the nuts they had had in the fall, or the 
grasses and fresh green leaves of summer. 
They grew thin and lean, and pretty soon 
their bones began to show through their 
thick coats. If you had killed them and 
eaten them you would have found that 
they tasted of hemlock, instead of beech- 
nuts. But they w T ere strong and healthy, 
even if they were thin. And of course 
you can't expect to be very fat in winter 
— not when you have to live out in the 
woods and eat evergreen twigs. 

The swamp was a good place to stay 
through the cold weather, because the 
trees stood so close together that they 
kept the wind away. All the deer came 
for miles around, and there were so many 
of them that they made narrow paths in 
the snow, where they could walk up and 
down and eat from the branches on both 



The Story of Split-Hoof 31 

sides. The woodsmen call these paths 



" run-ways." 



One day three deer were going down 
a run-way that led to a spring, to get a 
drink of water. First came an old buck. 
Then came the fawn, and then came his 
mother. They were all walking along very 
quietly, minding their own business and 
doing nobody any harm. They looked so 
gentle and peaceful that you would not 
have thought anybody could want to hurt 
them. But when they had almost reached 
the cedar tree that stood close beside the 
path near the spring, a man stepped out 
from behind it and said, " Stop! " 

And they stopped. 

It was Aleck, the tall, black-bearded 
moss-back who had watched the fawn 
and his mother when they walked on the 
beach in summer. This time they had not 
smelled him, because the wind was the 
wrong way. He was only thirty feet from 
them, and he had a rifle in his hands. 



32 Forest Neighbors 

The deer were so startled that for a 
moment they did not know what to do. 
They stood perfectly still in the run-way 
and stared at him. The old buck had 
stopped so suddenly that he leaned back- 
ward., with his fore-feet thrust forward 
into the snow. His head was up, his eyes 
stuck out. He looked so surprised that 
Aleck laughed, just as he had laughed last 
summer. Then he lifted his gun and took 
aim. The buck turned to run, but the man 
fired just as he took his first jump, and 
he came tumbling down in a heap. 

The doe and the fawn never saw him 
again, for they ran as fast as they could 
gOo The moss-back fired again, and the 
bullet passed so close to them that they 
heard it say "Zip! " as it w r ent by. But 
it did not quite hit them, and in another 
second they were around a turn in the 
path and out of sight. 

The next day they passed that way 
again. There was a great red stain on 



The Storij of Split-Hoof 33 

the snow, and a wild-cat stood there, 
licking "his chops as if he had had a 
good dinner. 

It was a long, long winter, but the 
spring came at last. The fawn put off 
his heavy overcoat and grew another thin 
red suit. It was very much like the one 
he had worn last summer, except that it 
did not have any white spots. He was 
not really a fawn any longer. He was a 
yearling, and he was almost as tall as a 
full-grown deer. And now he had to leave 
his mother and take care of himself, for 
two little baby brothers came, and they 
kept her so busy that she could not pay any 
attention to him. Twin babies were as 
much as she could look after, without 
attending to a great young deer that was 
nearly as large as she. 

But the yearling didn't mind. He was 
not afraid to be alone. He had grown 
so tall and so strong that none of the 
other animals were likely to attack him 



34 Forest Neighbors 

— not even the lynx or the bear. Per- 
haps a pack of wolves would have caught 
him and killed him if they had had a 
chance, but the wolves did not often come 
to the Glimmerglass. 

The yearling was never lonesome, for 
he always had plenty of things to do. 
Eating and chewing his cud took up a 
great deal of time, for he was still grow- 
ing, and it seemed as if he was always 
hungry. And of course the black-flies 
and the mosquitoes and no-see- 'ems came 
again, and they helped to keep him inter- 
ested. Often they drove him down to the 
beach, and sometimes he would wade out 
into the water to feed on the lilypads. 
Once or twice he swam clear across the 
Glimmerglass, from one shore to the other. 
So there was always something to think 
about. 

And that summer he raised his first 
real antlers. The ones that came through 
the skin the year before were nothing but 



The Story of Split-Hoof 35 

two little buds of bone, but these were 

about five inches long. They were not 

very handsome. 

They stood up 

straight from the 

top of his head, 

without any 

curves or any 

forks or branches, 

but they were 

real antlers, just 

the same. Late 

in the fall they 

dropped off, as antlers always do, so that 

he could grow a bigger and handsomer pair 

the next summer. 

It was that fall that he hurt his foot. 
One bright moonlight night he came to a 
place where some lumbermen had been 
working during the day. They had eaten 
their lunch there, and somebody had left 
a few baked beans lying on the ground. 
The yearling ate them, and he liked them 




36 Forest Neighbors 

better than anything else he had ever 
tasted. Then he found a piece of dried- 
apple pie. He ate that, too, and he liked 
it even better than the beans. And then, 
just as he was looking round to see if he 
couldn't find something more that was 
good to eat, he felt a terrible pain in his 
left hind foot. One of the lumbermen had 
left an axe lying in the snow, with the 
edge turned up, and he had stepped on it. 

Now, you know a deer has cloven hoofs, 
like a cow. It is as if there were two 
hard, horny toes on each foot. The axe 
had slipped in between them and cut deep 
into the flesh. It was a long time before 
it healed, and even then his foot was 
never quite the same. His toes were 
always spread far apart, instead of lying 
close together, as they should have done. 

He could still run almost as fast as 
ever, and he could jump almost as far. 
But sometimes the sticks and roots would 
catch in his foot in a way that was very 



The Story of Split-Hoof 37 

troublesome. And it made his track dif- 
ferent from that of any other deer. The 
moment you saw that spreading foot-print 
in the snow or sand, you knew he had 
been there. Aleck saw it very often, and 
he always said, " There's old Split-Hoof 
again." 

The lumbermen saw it, too, and they 
thought it a very strange track for a deer 
to make. And there was a judge who 
lived in Detroit, three hundred miles 
away, who sometimes came to the Glim- 
merglass for the hunting season. He saw 
it, and he never forgot about it. 

Two more winters and two more sum- 
mers went by. Split-Hoof was not a 
yearling any longer, but a grown-up buck. 
And now the hunting season came again. 

One afternoon, when the Judge was 
going home from the courthouse, he bought 
a paper from a newsboy on the corner. The 
very first thing he read was the weather 
forecast. Not the weather in Detroit. He 



38 Forest Neighbors 

didn't care anything about that. But the 
weather in northern Michigan — up in the 
Lake Superior country — around the Glim- 
mergiass. And the forecast said it was 
going to turn cold, and that there would 
be a little snow. 

All the way home the Judge was think- 
ing about it. A little snow would make 
good still-hunting, and he was very, very 
fond of hunting. The more he thought 
about it the more he wanted to go. Court 
had closed for three days, and that night 
he took the train for the Grlimmerglass. 

About noon the next day Split-Hoof 
was lying under a tree, chewing his cud, 
when he thought he smelled a man. He 
drew a long, deep breath. Yes, there 
was a man somewhere to windward. He 
jumped up and hurried away. 

In a minute or two the Judge came 
along and stopped to look at the trail 
that Split-Hoof had left behind him. 
There was about an inch and a half of 



The Story of Split-Hoof 39 

snow on the ground — just enough to 
make one's tracks clear and plain. And 
there in the white carpet w T as the broad, 
spreading print of the buck's left hind 
foot — the same foot-print that the Judge 
had seen two years before. 

" I'll get him! " the Judge said to 
himself. 

For a little while Split-Hoof ran very 
fast. Then he slowed down, and pretty 
soon he stopped and began nosing about 
in the snow, searching for beechnuts. He 
thought he was out of danger. 

The Judge had taken off his shoes and 
put on moccasins, so that he could walk 
more quietly. He scarcely made a sound 
as he hurried through the woods, follow- 
ing the buck's foot-prints. It must have 
been an hour before he saw him, but at 
last he caught sight of him, still searching 
for beechnuts in the snow. The Judge 
took aim, and just then Split-Hoof started 
to walk away. The Judge pulled the 



40 Forest Neighbors 

trigger, and the bullet struck his left 
antler and broke off a little piece of it. 

In the fall of the year there is no feel- 
ing in a deer's antlers, any more than 
there is in your hair, but if you strike 
them it hurts his head, and sometimes 
it makes him dizzy. So it hurt the buck 
terribly when that bullet hit him. It hurt 
him even worse than when he stepped on 
the axe. But it lasted only a moment, 
and before the Judge could fire again he 
dodged behind a tree and ran. 

Now a deer's tail is dark on top and 
white underneath, and when he is walking 
or running he generally holds it straight 
up. And so, if you are standing behind 
him, you see the white side of it, and it 
looks as if he were carrying a white flag. 
But if anything strikes him or hurts him 
he puts it down, just as a dog puts his 
tail between his legs if you speak crossly 
to him. When Split-Hoof started off his 
tail was standing straight up in the air. 



The Stonj of Split-Hoof 41 

The Judge could see it very plainly. But 
when the bullet hit his antler he put it 
down, quick as a flash, and so the Judge 
knew he was hit. 

Now the hunters say that if you shoot 
a deer, and if you hurt him badly but do 
not kill him, it is better not to chase 
him. As long as you chase him he will 
keep running, even if he is very badly 
wounded. But if you let him alone he 
will run a little way, and then he will 
lie down to rest. And if he once lies 
down he will soon get stiff and faint and 
weak — so weak that he cannot get up 
again. And then, after a few hours, you 
can come and kill him. That is what 
the hunters say. But if he is not much 
hurt you may as well keep right after 
him. 

The Judge didn't know what to do. 
He knew he had hit the buck, because 
he had seen his tail come down, but he 
didn't know whether he had hit him very 



42 Forest Neighbors 

liard. If Spiit-Hoof was badly hurt, then 
it would be best to leave him alone for a 
few hours. But if he was not much 
hurt it would be best to follow him right 
away. So the Judge walked over to the 
place where he had stood, and looked 
around very carefully to see if there was 
any blood on the snow. And of course 
he didn't find a single drop. In the fall 
of the year a deer's antlers will not bleed, 
any more than your finger-nails do when 
you cut them. So he decided that Split- 
Hoof was not very badly wounded, and 
that he had better go right after him 
and try to get another shot. 

This time Split-Hoof ran very fast for 
nearly a mile. He was more frightened 
than he had ever been before. But he 
slowed down at last, and by and by he 
stopped and looked around. There was 
nobody in sight, and the woods were 
very, very still. He could not see the 
least sign of danger. Yet he was afraid, 



The Story of Split-Hoof 43 

and all the rest of the day he kept a 
careful watch, wherever he went. Some- 
times he walked, sometimes he ran, and 
sometimes he stopped to rest or to eat; 
but always he kept watch. It was well 
that he did, for all day the Judge fol- 
lowed on his trail, never stopping once. 
And at last, just before sunset, Split- 
Hoof saw him coming. This time he ran 
even faster than he had when the bullet 
struck his antler. 

That night the Judge stayed at a lum- 
ber-camp. The next morning he was out 
again as soon as it was light enough for 
him to see his own tracks. He followed 
them back to the spot where he had left 
the trail of the buck, and the still-hunt 
began once more. 

So all day long they played hide-and- 
seek, with Split-Hoof always hiding and 
the Judge always seeking. Of course the 
deer could run very much faster than 
the man, and again and again he left 



44 . Forest Neighbors 

him far behind. Again and again he 
thought he was safe. But in a little while 
the Judge would come stealing quietly 
through the bushes, with his rifle in his 
hands. Once he fired before the buck 
knew he was there, but it was a long 
shot and he missed. 

It w T as the snow that made it so hard for 
Split-Hoof. Wherever he went he left a 
trail so plain that any one could follow 
it as easily as walking down the street. 
And there wasn't any way that Split- 
Hoof could help it. There wasn't any 
way at all. 

Several times that day the Judge saw 
the tracks of other deer, but he didn't 
pay any attention to them. He wanted 
Split-Hoof, and he followed him — fol- 
lowed him — followed him — from morning 
till night. He couldn't travel as fast as 
the buck, but he never stopped. 

Once, late in the afternoon, Split-Hoof 
really thought he was safe, and the Judge 



The Story of Split-Hoof 45 

began to think so too. They had not 
seen each other for nearly three hours. 
The day was almost over, and it would 
soon be too dark for the man to keep 
the trail. Best of all, the weather was 
getting warmer, and it looked as if it 
might rain. If it did the snow would 
melt, and then the deer would not leave 
any more foot-prints, and the man could 
not follow him. 

But there was one thing that bothered 
Split-Hoof very much. The last time the 
Judge had shot at him he had given 
three or four very long, high jumps, to 
get out of sight as quickly as he could. 
When he came down from the second 
leap his lame foot had struck the end 
of a sharp stick. If his toes had been 
close together, as they ought to have been, 
it wouldn't have done him any harm, but 
they were spread apart, and the stick 
went straight in between them and cut 
him pretty badly. He was so excited that 



46 Forest Neighbors 

at first he didn't feel it very much, but 
a little later it began to hurt him, and 
most of the afternoon he had to go on 
three legs instead of four. A deer can 
run very fast on three legs, but it is very 
hard work, and before dark he was almost 
worn out. 

About sunset he came to a big maple 
tree that the wind had torn up by the 
roots. It was lying flat on the ground, 
and he walked around its bushy head and 
down toward its foot. There he found a 
great mass of roots and earth standing 
up straight as a wall, six or eight feet 
high. Against it, just where the tree had 
stood, there was a saucer-shaped hollow 
in the ground. And in that hollow was 
a heap of dead leaves that the wind had 
gathered. The wall had kept the snow 
away, and they were dry and soft and 
very tempting. The buck stood still and 
looked at them. He was almost used up, 
and his foot ached and smarted so that 




At last he lay on that soft, comfortable bed and began to 
chew his cud. 



48 Forest Neighbors 

it seemed as if he couldn't stand it any 
longer. The Judge was nowhere in sight, 
and at last he lay on that soft, comfort- 
able bed and began to chew his cud. 

Ten minutes later the Judge came 
stealthily around the fallen tree-top, fol- 
lowing Split-Hoof's fresh tracks. The 
buck could not see him, for the wall of 
roots and earth was in the way. Neither 
could he hear him, for the Judge's moc- 
casined feet made no sound in the soft 
snow. And he could not smell him, for 
there was no wind to carry the scent. 
But now, just at the right moment, a 
tiny little breeze came wandering through 
the woods. It w T as so faint that neither 
of them noticed it, but suddenly the buck 
started and looked around. He caught 
his breath quickly, and then he jumped 
up on his three good legs and leaped for 
the nearest thicket. 

Just as he went out of sight the Judge 
fired. The bullet struck him in his right 



The Story of Split-Hoof 49 

side and broke three of his ribs. He 
came tumbling down in a heap, just as 
the other buck had done, three years 
before. But in a moment he was up again, 
and away he went, running almost as fast 
as if nothing had happened. 

The Judge ran too, till he came to the 
spot where Split-Hoof had fallen, and 
there in the white snow he found a big 
red blood-stain. He turned away and 
went back to the lumber-camp for the 
night. He knew that this time the buck 
was very badly wounded, and that it was 
best to leave him alone till morning. 

For a little way Split-Hoof galloped 
along on three legs, with his tail down 
and the blood spurting. Then he lay down 
to rest, just as the Judge knew he would. 
The bleeding soon stopped, but it left him 
very weak and faint. The night came. 
The wind began to blow, and by and by 
the rain came down — first a drizzle, and 
then a steady pour. Cold and wet, 



50 Forest Neighbors 

wounded and tired and hungry, Split- 
Hoof was almost ready to die. 

Very early in the morning the Judge 
was out again. The snow was melting in 
the warm rain, but there was enough left 
to show the foot-prints. He followed them 
till he came to the place w^here the buck 
had lain all night. But Split-Hoof wasn't 
there, for Aleck, the moss-back, had passed 
that way only a few minutes before. 

Now, just suppose the Judge had got 
there first. He would have crept along 
through the bushes, very quietly and cau^ 
tiously. He would probably have got close 
enough to shoot before Split-Hoof knew 
he was coming. But Aleck did not come 
silently. Instead he seemed to make just 
as much noise as he knew how. He rus- 
tled the dead leaves under the snow, and 
he whistled " Yankee Doodle " as loud as 
he could. Do you know why? It was 
because it is never safe to walk quietly 
in the woods in the hunting season. Some 



The Story of Split-Hoof 51 

one might take you for a deer and shoot 
you. So Aleck stamped and whistled and 
sang, and Split-Hoof heard him while he 
was still a long way off. 

But when Split-Hoof tried to get up it 
seemed as if he could never, never make 
it. He was stiff and sore and weak, and 
every move sent the pain shooting through 
his whole body. He lifted himself on his 
knees, and then he had to lie down again 
with a groan. He almost wished he could 
die and be done with it. But Aleck was 
coming nearer and nearer, and Split-Hoof 
kept trying till at last he got upon his 
feet. And after the first jump it was not 
quite so bad. The motion took some of 
the stiffness out of him, and his lame foot 
was much better than it had been when 
he lay down. 

Aleck was not hunting that morning. 
He didn't care to kill a deer that day, 
and he didn't even have his gun with him. 
He was only going to a railway station 



52 Forest Neighbors 

to get some flour. But it happened that 
he had to go the same way that Split- 
Hoof had gone, and so he followed him 
for more than a mile, still whistling, and 
still rustling the dead leaves. 

Of course Split-Hoof kept going too. 
At last he came out into a more open 
part of the woods, where the trees stood 
farther apart, and where the snow had 
all melted away. About that time Aleck 
turned into a tote-road that led down to 
the station, and his whistle sounded a lit- 
tle farther off. The buck stood still and 
listened. Farther and farther it seemed 
to go — fainter and fainter — till it died 
away in the distance. And then Split- 
Hoof lay down again to rest. 

All this time the Judge was very busy. 
He found the place where Split-Hoof bad 
lain all night in the rain. He found some 
more blood on the snow, and he found 
the tracks that Split-Hoof had made when 
he got up and ran away from the moss- 



The Story of Split-Hoof 53 

back. He trailed the buck a long way, 
and then he, too, came out into the open 
woods, where the snow had melted. He 
could not follow the foot-prints any far- 
ther, because there weren't any foot-prints 
to follow. There was nothing but the 
dead, brown leaves covering all the ground. 
There was not a single sign to show which 
way the buck had gone. All day he 
searched the woods, but he never saw 
Split-Hoof again. 

The Judge was very much disappointed 
when he went aboard the train that night, 
to go back to Detroit. And he was a little 
ashamed, too, for he thought Split-Hoof 
was suffering and perhaps dying. To 
wound a deer and then let him get away 
was much more cruel than to kill him. 
The Judge really felt grieved about it, and 
he almost made up his mind that he would 
never go hunting again. 

But Split-Hoof didn't really have such 
a hard time, after all. His wound didn't 



54 Forest Neighbors 

hurt him as much as you might think, 
and his foot was getting better all the 
time. In the afternoon he walked around 
for a little while and ate some supper. It 
stopped raining, and the next morning 
the weather cleared up. For two weeks 
the sun shone every day. There was no 
snow to hide the beechnuts, and he had 
plenty to eat. And so he got along very 
nicely. In a short time the bullet-hole 
healed, the broken ribs grew together, 
and he w T as well again. The rain had saved 
him. 

The next year his antlers got him into 
trouble. In the spring, when they first 
came, they were nothing but two round, 
black knobs on the top of his head, covered 
with a sort of thick skin that looked like 
velvet. But they grew very fast, and in 
a few weeks they were six or eight inches 
long. At this time they were almost 
straight, and they slanted backward and 
a little outward, away from each other. 



The Story of Split-Hoof 55 

They were hot with the blood that was 
rushing through them, and their ends 
were soft and spongy. 

Longer and longer the antlers grew, 
and by and by they curved forward and 
inward, and the sharp tines came upon 
them, like branches on a tree. Some peo- 
ple think there is always a tine for every 
year the buck has lived. Well, some- 
times there is and sometimes there isn't. 
But there was this time; Split-Hoof was 
four years old and each antler had four 
tines. In the early fall they were finished, 
and now the blood stopped flowing through 
them, and they grew hard and dry, like 
bone. Last of all, Split-Hoof rubbed them 
against the trees till the velvety skin 
came off and left them smooth and brown 
and polished. They w r ere the longest and 
most graceful antlers he had ever had. 

And now Split-Hoof began to get fat. 
All summer he had eaten heartily, but he 
couldn't get very plump as long as those 




Split-Hoof was four years old and each antler had four 

tines. 



The Story of Split-Hoof 57 

antlers were growing. It took too much 
blood to build them. Now that they were 
grown he commenced to put on flesh. In a 
few weeks he was bigger and heavier and 
stronger than he had ever been before. 
And he was more quarrelsome. Usually 
he didn't quarrel at all. Usually he left 
the other deer alone, and they left him 
alone. They all minded their own busi- 
ness. But this fall he sometimes felt as 
if he would like to fight everybody in 
the woods. One day he and another buck 
had a battle that came near being the end 
of both of them. 

They began by backing off a little way 
and then rushing together, like two bat- 
tle-ships ramming each other. Their fore- 
heads struck with a bang, and their antlers 
rattled and clashed. To hear the racket 
you would have thought they must be 
killed. But it was mostly noise, for they 
were not very much hurt. 

Then they held their heads together 



58 Forest Neighbors 

and pushed. Sometimes Split-Hoof drove 
the other buck backward a little way, and 
sometimes the other buck drove him. It 
didn't settle things at all, so next they 
tried to stab each other with the sharp 
points of their antlers. That didn't work 
very well, either, for each of them used 
his own antlers as a shield to keep the 
other off, and they both managed so skill- 
fully that neither one of them could do 
the other any harm. So they tried butting 
again, and this time they kept it up till 
they were almost tired out. They rushed 
and pushed and shoved. They tore up 
the bushes, and they scattered the dry 
leaves under their feet. Their breath came 
in gasps. There was foam on their lips 
and sweat on their sides. And yet neither 
of them was very badly hurt. 

At last they backed off and ran at each 
other again, and now they struck so hard 
that Split-Hoof's antlers were bent a little 
way apart, and the other buck's slipped 



60 Forest Neighbors 

in between them. There was a loud snap, 
and the mischief was done. The antlers 
were locked together, and they would not 
let go. 

Split-Hoof pulled with all his might, 
and the other buck pulled just as hard. 
They braced themselves, and they tugged 
and strained and jerked till they nearly 
twisted their heads off. But it was no 
use. They were chained together like a 
prisoner and his jailer, and they could 
not get away. 

The next few weeks were worse than 
a nightmare. If one of them went for- 
ward the other had to go backward. If 
one of them wanted to go anywhere or 
do anything, the other had to go along. 
Many things they could not do at all — 
not even when both of them wanted to. 
They could not run or jump. They could 
not see, except out of the corners of their 
eyes. They could not lift their heads. 
They could not even lie down without 



The Story of Split-Hoof 61 

twisting their necks till they ached as if 
they were breaking. And, worst of all, 
they could not get enough to eat. 

They were always staring sidewise, from 
the corners of their eyes, and sometimes 
they spied a bunch of leaves, or a few 
tender twigs, or perhaps a beechnut or a 
bit of lichen. Whatever it was, they 
both made a dive for it, and sometimes 
one of them got it and sometimes the 
other. But neither of them ever got 
enough to keep him from going hungry. 
In a few days Split-Hoof was getting 
thin again — as thin as if it w T as the mid- 
dle of winter. In a week or two he was 
thinner than he had ever been before in 
all his life. 

But the other buck was thinner still 
— thinner and weaker and more miserable. 
That was because he was never quite as 
strong as Split-Hoof. So, when they 
fought for a beechnut or a bunch of leaves, 
Split-Hoof generally got it. Then, of 



62 Forest Neighbors 

course, the other buck grew weaker still, 
and at last the time came when he got 
nothing at all. Split-Hoof was getting 
everything. It would have been better 
for both of them if they had divided 
evenly, but they didn't. 

And then, one dark, cold, rainy night, 
the weaker deer died of starvation, and 
Split-Hoof was left alone, bound face to 
face to a dead buck. 

The next day was horrible, but I think 
w r e won't talk about it. Split-Hoof, too, 
would soon have been dead if something 
very unexpected had not happened — 
something that seemed like a blessed mir- 
acle, though it was really very simple 
and natural. 

Some time in the fall or winter a buck 
always loses his antlers. They drop from 
his head as the dead leaves drop from 
the trees in October, and the next sum- 
mer a new pair comes in their place. But 
there is no regular time for them to fall. 



The Story of Split-Hoof 63 

Sometimes it is November, sometimes 
December, sometimes January. Once in 
a long while they stay till March or April, 
though that is very rare. 

All day and all the next night Split- 
Hoof lay there by the dead buck, and 
then, in the early morning, he lifted him- 
self on his knees and tried once more to 
get away. He was too weak to do much, 
but he pulled and twisted and wrestled 
as hard as he could, and suddenly his 
left antler came off and set him free. 

He stood up, with the blood running 
down his face from the place where the 
antler had been. He was almost as thin 
as a shadow, and he was so weak and 
dizzy that his legs would hardly hold 
him. But he was free, and that long, 
horrible dream was over at last. Just 
to hold his neck straight was like a taste 
of Heaven. 

The sun was rising. Through the trees 
he could see the shimmer and sparkle of 



64 Forest Neighbors 

the Glimmerglass, and he turned toward 
it, for he was almost dying of thirst. He 
fell down at the first step, and for a long 
time he had to lie still and rest. At last 
he rose and staggered down to the shore. 
He drank long and deep, and then he 
turned back to the woods and ate his fill 
of beechnuts and tender twigs. 

By Christmas time he was getting fat 
again. 

The next spring he set to work to raise 
another pair of antlers, and for a few 
weeks they grew very rapidly. It looked 
as if they would be even larger and hand- 
somer than those he had fought with. 
But about the middle of the summer some- 
thing seemed to go wrong w T ith one of 
them. I don't know just what the trouble 
was. Possibly he struck his head against 
a tree, or perhaps a dead branch may 
have fallen and hit him. But, whatever 
it may have been, the left antler almost 
stopped growing. The right one was quite 




The left antler almost stopped growing. 



66 Forest Neighbors 

perfect, and by September it was the 
finest he had ever had. But the other 
was nothing but a short, straight, pointed 
spike, not more than eight inches long, 
without any curves or any tines. 

It made him a rather queer-looking 
buck, but he was handsome even now, 
and before that spike dropped off he found 
it very useful. 

That fall Aleck brought a big English 
foxhound to the Glimmerglass. He was 
a fine dog — the kind of dog that you 
would like to have for a friend. But he 
had a voice like a fog-horn, and when he 
went baying through the woods the fawns 
and the rabbits almost died of fright. 

It was against the law to hunt deer 
with dogs, but the hound didn't know it, 
and Aleck didn't care. The very first 
day the hound got on the trail of a doe. 
He chased her for hours, back and forth, 
over the hills, down through the swamps, 
and back to the hills again. The Judge 



The Story of Split-Hoof 67 

could not track Split-Hoof without seeing 
his foot-prints, but the hound's nose was 
so keen that he could follow the doe 
anywhere by the scent that her feet left 
on the dry leaves. No matter how far or 
how fast she went, she always heard that 
terrible baying close behind her. At last 
she made up her mind that she must 
try the Glimmerglass. She would jump 
into the water and swim clear across to 
the farther shore, and perhaps in that 
way she would get rid of him. 

She did not know that Aleck was out 
on the Glimmerglass in a row-boat, wait- 
ing for her. But that was just where he 
was, for he knew that sooner or later 
she would have to come to the lake. It 
was the only way she could ever get 
away from the hound. So he waited and 
watched till he saw her jump in. Then 
he picked up his oars and rowed as hard 
as he could. The dog stopped on the 
shore, and at first the doe thought she 



68 Forest Neighbors 

was safe. But it was only a few minutes. 
Then the row-boat came, and Aleck took 
his rifle and shot her dead. 

About a week later he and the fox- 
hound w T ent hunting again, and this time 
the dog got on Split-Hoof's trail. Split- 
Hoof ran till he was nearly exhausted, 
and then he, too, decided that he must 
take to the Glimmerglass. So he made 
for the lake, just as the doe had done, 
but not for the same part of it. She 
had taken the water at the western end, 
but he headed for the long strip of sandy 
beach where he and his mother had walked 
five years before. He was running faster 
than he had run since the Judge's still- 
hunt, for the dog was close behind him, 
almost at his heels. 

Pretty soon he saw the sunshine on 
the water, and he made a last dash and 
shot out of the woods onto the beach. 
And just then his lame foot caught on a 
root, and he fell flat on the ground. The 



The Story of Split-Hoof 69 

dog was coming so fast that he ran into 
Split-Hoof head-first. For a moment they 
lay side by side in the warm sand. 

Now it happened that Aleck got tired 
of sitting in the row-boat all the morning, 
and he had come ashore just a few min- 
utes before Split-Hoof started for the lake. 
He w r as away down at the far end of the 
beach — too far to use his rifle. But he 
saw the dog and the deer come out of 
the woods, and he started for them as 
fast as he could run. 

Split-Hoof and the hound jumped up, 
and for a moment they stood and glared 
at each other. The dog did not really 
want to fight. He had been trained to 
follow a deer — not to attack him. But 
he was game, and now that they were 
face to face he would not run away. 
And so, with a deep growl, he sprang 
at Split-Hoof's throat. But he never 
reached it. Split-Hoof simply put his 
head down and caught the hound on the 



70 Forest Neighbors 

point of that short, sharp spike. He tossed 
him in the air, caught him as he came 
down, and tossed him again. And then 
he threw him on the ground and trampled 
on him till he was dead. 

The buck was so busy that he did not 
notice any one coming till he heard a 
loud click, close behind him. He looked 
around, and there was Aleck, pointing a 
rifle at him. There came another click, 
and now Aleck lowered the gun and jerked 
angrily at a lever. Something was wrong; 
the cartridge would not go off, and it had 
stuck fast in the breech so that he could 
not get it out. Split-Hoof stood and stared 
at him for about two seconds, and then he 
did something that few deer had ever 
done before. Probably he would not have 
done it himself if he had not been almost 
crazy with anger and excitement. He put 
his head down and his antlers forward 
and he charged on a man! 

Aleck w^as still jerking at the lever of 



The Story of Split-Hoof 71 

his rifle, but lie could do nothing with it, 
and he knew better than to let that spike- 
antler touch him. If Split-Hoof once got 
him he would kill him, just as he had 
killed the dog. The moss-back stood his 
ground till the deer was almost upon him, 
but the rifle wouldn't work, and at last 
he dropped it and ran for his life. Split- 
Hoof followed him a little way, and then 
turned into the woods. 

So Aleck went home — very, very angry. 
His dog was dead, his rifle was broken, 
and he had had to run away from a deer. 
He felt very badly about the foxhound, 
and he said to himself that he was going 
to kill Split-Hoof if it took all winter. 
He had a plan, and the next morning he 
took a bag of salt and started off through 
the woods. 

About a mile from the Glimmerglass, 
just at the edge of the cedar swamp, he 
came to a big spring, bubbling up out of 
the ground. All around it was soft black 



72 Forest Neighbors 

mud, full of the tracks of wild animals. 
He stopped and looked at them carefully. 
The rabbits had been there to drink, and 
a porcupine, and a bear, and a lynx, and 
a great many deer. And at last he found 
what he wanted — the broad print of Split- 
Hoof's left hind foot. 

Close by was an old log, the trunk of 
a dead cedar that had fallen many years 
before. Aleck took his axe and chopped 
a hollow in its upper side, and then he 
emptied the bag of salt into it and went 
home. 

That night Split-Hoof came for a drink, 
and the moment he reached the spring he 
smelled something good. He was very 
fond of salt, and he hadn't had any for 
several months. So he hurried over to 
the fallen tree and took a good big taste. 
He stayed for more than an hour, and 
he had a very, very good time. First he 
would take a lick of salt, and then he 
w r ould go to the spring and get a drink 



The Story of Split-Hoof 73 

of cold water. And then he would come 
back to the salt again. It tasted as good 
to him as a dish of ice-cream does to 
you. 

The next evening a different kind of 
visitor came. He was a man, but he 
wasn't a moss-back, and he wasn't a 
hunter, and he wasn't a trapper. He was 
a photographer from Chicago, and he had 
come to the woods to get some photo- 
graphs of wild animals. He had three 
cameras, and he set them in a row on 
the fallen cedar and pointed them at the 
spring. Then he fixed a flash-light so 
that he could set it off by pulling a 
trigger. When everything was ready he 
wrapped himself in a blanket and lay 
down behind the log, so that he could 
just see over the top of it. 

Soon it grew dark. He waited a long 
time, and at last he heard a little rustling 
in the dry leaves. Something was coming. 
Presently a dim, shadowy form moved 



74 Forest Neighbors 

down the trail and stopped beside the 
water. The night was so dark that he 
could not make out the shape of it, but 
it was so tall that he felt sure it must 
be a deer. For a moment it stood still, 
as if it w T as drinking. Then it seemed to 
lift its head, and he saw its eyes gleaming 
in the darkness. He didn't know that 
his own eyes were gleaming too — very 
faintly, but just enough for the deer to 
see them. 

The photographer pulled the trigger. A 
great blaze shot up from the flash-light, 
like a sheet of lightning. For an instant 
he saw the deer, the trees and the spring 
as plainly as if it were broad day. Then 
it was dark again, and he heard the deer 
dashing away through the woods. He 
was very much pleased, for he felt sure 
he had a good picture. 

He changed the films in his cameras, 
and loaded the flash-light for another 
exposure. Then he lay down again behind 



The Story of Split-Hoof 75 

the log, to wait for the next animal. It 
was an hour before he heard anything 
more, then at last some kind of creature 
came and stood under the trees the other 
side of the spring. He could hardly see 
it. at all, and he didn't know whether it 
was a deer or something else, but he was 
certain that some large animal was stand- 
ing there. He wondered if it could be 
a bear, and he put his finger on the trig- 
ger of the flash-light and waited for it to 
come a little nearer. 

But it wasn't a bear. It was Aleck, 
, the moss-back, who had come to look for 
Split-Hoof. The fallen tree with the salt 
in it lay just beyond the spring, and 
Aleck was almost certain he had heard 
something moving. Perhaps it was Split- 
Hoof, licking the salt. So he stared, and 
stared, and stared, trying to make out 
what lay hidden in the shadows. It was 
too dark for him to be sure, but by and 
by he thought he saw two eyes watching 



76 Forest Neighbors 

him from behind the fallen tree. That 
must be Split-Hoof, he said to himself. 
And he lifted his rifle and aimed it straight 
between those eyes, never dreaming that 
they belonged to a man. 

Just then Split-Hoof himself came up 
from another direction, walking silently 
in the soft, wet moss of the cedar swamp. 
He wanted some more of that salt. The 
two men were watching each other so 
closely that they never saw him or heard 
him. And just as he came in sight of 
them, when he had almost reached the 
spring, Aleck pulled the trigger of his 
rifle, and the photographer pulled the 
trigger of the flash-light. Another blaze 
lit up the woods, and at the same moment 
the rifle spoke, and the photographer 
dropped dead, with a bullet through his 
forehead. 

Split-Hoof saw it all as in a dream. 
He saw the great white flame of the flash- 
light. He saw the tall, black-bearded 



The Story of Split-Hoof 11 

man, with his gun pointed straight at the 
photographer. He saw the rifle-smoke, 
and he saw the bullet-hole in the photog- 
rapher's forehead. He saw the three 
cameras standing on the log. He saw the 
water gleaming in the fierce light, and 
the cedars standing guard all round. And 
then it was dark — darker than ever — 
and he was bumping against trees and 
stumbling over roots in his hurry to get 
away. 

And so the photographer lost his life, 
and Aleck, the moss-back, was sent to 
prison for killing him. But Split-Hoof 
and all the other deer lived happily for 
many years, with never a dog or a hunter 
to disturb them. For all the land around 
the Glimmerglass belonged to a few men 
who were friends of the photographer, and 
when they heard what had happened they 
gave orders that no one should ever hunt 
there again. 

So the bucks and the does and the 



78 Forest Neighbors 

fawns were left in peace, to feed on the 
beechnuts and the lily-pads, to swim in 
the cool, clear water, and to rest and 
chew their cuds in the shade of the 
trees. Every winter they went away to 
the cedar swamps, but every summer they 
came again to the Glimmerglass, and often 
Split-Hoof left his broad spreading track 
in the hard, smooth sand of the beach. 

Perhaps it is there now. Don't you 
wish you could go and see? 



The Beaver and the 
Two Cities 




^7W\i® FAMILY of young beavers 
were romping in the afternoon 
sunshine. One of them brought 
his broad, flat tail down on the water 
with a whack that sent the echoes flying 
back and forth across the pond. Then he 
ducked his head, arched his back and 
dived to the bottom. It was a very curious 
tail, for besides being oddly paddle-shaped 
it was covered with what looked like fish- 
scales, but were really sections of hard, 
horny, blackish-gray skin. There is no 
other animal in all the world that has a 
tail just like the beaver's, and he finds 
it useful in a great many ways. Just 
now this beaver was using his as a rud- 

79 



80 Forest Neighbors 

der to steer him as he swam under water. 
It w^as a very good rudder, too. 

In a moment his little brown head 
appeared again, and he and his brothers 
and sisters went chasing each other round 
and round the pond, ducking and diving 
and splashing, and sending the ripples 
w r ashing all along the grassy shores. They 
were having the j oiliest kind of time. It 
isn't the usual thing for young beavers 
to be out in broad daylight, but all this 
happened in the days before the rail- 
ways came, when there were fewer men 
in Northern Michigan than there are 
now. 

When the youngsters wanted a change 
they climbed up onto a log to play. They 
nudged and hunched each other, poking 
their noses into one another's fat little 
sides, and each trying to shove his brother 
or sister back into the water. By and 
by they scrambled out on the bank, and 
then, when their fur had dripped a little, 




They were having the jolliest kind of time. 



82 Forest Neighbors 

they set to work to comb it. Up they 
sat on their hind legs and tails — the tail 
was a stool now, you see, — and scratched 
their heads and shoulders with the long 
brown claws of their small, black, hairy 
hands. Then the hind feet came up one 
at a time, and combed and stroked their 
sides till the moisture was gone and the 
fur was soft and smooth and glossy as 
velvet. 

After that they had to have another 
romp. They were not half so graceful on 
land as they had been in the water. In 
fact they were not graceful at all. The 
way they stood on their hind legs, and 
shuffled, and pranced, like baby hippo- 
potami, and slapped the ground with their 
tails, was one of the funniest sights in 
the heart of the woods. And the funniest 
and liveliest of them all was the one who 
owned that tail — the tail, which, when 
I saw it last, was lying on the ground in 
front of Aleck's shack. He was the one 



The Beaver and the Two Cities 83 

whom I shall call the Beaver — with a 
big B. 

But even young beavers will grow tired 
of play, and at last they all lay down on 
the grass in the warm quiet sunshine of 
the autumn afternoon. The wind had gone 
to sleep, the pond was without a ripple, 
and the friendly woods stood guard all 
around. It was a very good time for 
five furry little beaver babies to take a 
nap. 

And while they are sleeping let us take 
a look at the first of the two cities — 
the one in which the Beaver was born. 
It was very old; in fact, it may have 
been the oldest town in North America. 
No one knows when the beavers first began 
to build the dam that stretched across the 
stream and backed the water up until it 
spread out across the valley in a broad, 
quiet pond. It was probably centuries 
ago, and for all we know it may have 
been thousands of years in the past. 



The Beaver and the Two Cities 85 

Family after family of beavers had 
worked on that dam, building it a little 
higher and a little higher, a little longer 
and a little longer, year after year. The 
round domes of their houses, or lodges, 
as they are called, rose directly from the 
water, and they too had been built higher 
as the water grew deeper. Their city 
streets, like those of Venice, were mostly 
of water. The only way to reach their 
houses was to dive to the bottom of the 
pond and find the mouth of the under- 
ground channel that led to the lodge. 
This also was filled with water, and was 
darker than the blackest night, until it 
turned suddenly upward and opened into 
the dry, warm room of the lodge, through 
the top of which a little light found its 
way. 

The beavers themselves were the best 
of swimmers and navigators, and they 
took to the water as naturally as ducks 



86 Forest Neighbors 

or Englishmen. They were lumbermen, 
too, for they cut down hundreds of trees 
and bushes. When the timber was gone 
from the shores of the pond they became 
ditch-diggers and dug canals across the 
low, level, marshy ground, back to the 
higher land. Here the birch and poplar 
trees still grew, and from here they floated 
logs and branches down their waterways 
to the pond. In this way they stored 
up a supply of food for winter, for the 
beaver's favorite meal is made of tender 
branches and the bark of trees. 

There were land roads as well as canals, 
for here and there narrow trails crossed 
the swamp, showing where one family 
after another had passed back and forth 
between the felled tree and the water's 
edge. So the beavers had streets, roads, 
canals, subways, houses, lumbering inter- 
ests, and rich stores laid up for the win- 
ter. What more do you want to make a 
city, even if the houses are few in number, 



88 Forest Neighbors 

and the population somewhat smaller than 
that of London or New York. 

The first year of our Beaver's life was 
an easy one, especially the winter. There 
was little for anyone to do except to eat, to 
sleep, and now and then to fish for the 
roots of the yellow water-lily in the soft 
mud at the bottom of the pond. But dur- 
ing that season he could at least grow. Not 
only was he becoming larger and heavier, 
but he was storing up strength and life 
for the work that lay before him. It would 
take much muscle to force those long 
yellow teeth of his through the hard tough 
flesh of the maple or the birch or the pop- 
lar. It would take vigor and push to roll 
the heavy pieces of w r ood over the grass- 
tufts to the edge of the w r ater. And, most 
of all, it would take strength and nerve to 
tear himself away from a steel trap and 
leave a foot behind. So it was well for the 
youngster that for a time he had nothing 
to do but grow. 



The Beaver and the Two Cities 89 

But spring came again, with the sun- 
shine, and then summer. Though the 
Beaver had many and many a fine romp 
with his brothers and sisters, still he began 
to learn to be a little useful in the world 
and to do the sort of things that his father 
and mother did. And now, on a dark night 
in early fall, behold the young Beaver, 
working with might and main. His par- 
ents have felled a tree, and it is his business 
to help them cut up the best portions and 
carry them home. He gnaws off a small 
branch, takes the butt end between his 
teeth, swings it over his shoulder, and 
makes for the w^ater. He keeps his head 
twisted around to one side, so that the end 
of the branch may trail on the ground 
behind him. Sometimes he even rises on 
his hind legs and walks almost upright. 
He uses his broad strong tail for a prop 
to keep him from tumbling over backward 
if his branch happens suddenly to catch 
on something. 



90 Forest Neighbors 

When he arrives at a canal or at the edge 
of the pond he jumps in and swims for 
town, still carrying the branch over his 
shoulder. Finally he leaves it on the pile 
in front of his father's lodge. Then he 
comes back for another, and perhaps he 
gets a stick that is too large and heavy 
to be carried over his shoulder. In that 
case he must cut it into short pieces, or 
billets, and roll them to the water's edge. 
This means that he must push with all his 
might, and there are so many, many grass- 
tufts and little hillocks in the way! Some- 
times the billet rolls into a hollow, and 
then it is very hard to get it out again. He 
works like a beaver, and pushes and shoves 
and toils with tremendous energy, but I 
am afraid that more than one choice stick 
never reaches the water. 

These were his first tasks. Later on he 
learned to fell trees himself. He would 
stand up on his hind legs and tail, with his 
hands braced against the trunk. Then 



The Beaver and the Two Cities 91 

holding his head sidewise, he would open 
his mouth wide, set his teeth against the 
bark, and bring his jaws together with a 
savage nip. A deep gash was left in the 
side of the tree. A second nip deepened 
the gash, and gave it more of a downward 
slant. Two or three more carried it still 
farther into the wood. Then he would 
choose a new spot a little farther down, 
and start a second gash, which was made 
to slant up toward the first. And when he 
thought that they were both deep enough 
he would set his teeth firmly in the wood 
between them, and pull and jerk and twist 
at it until he had wrenched out a chip — 
a chip perhaps two inches long, and from 
an eighth to a quarter of an inch thick. 
He would make bigger ones when he grew 
to be bigger himself, but you mustn't 
expect too much at first. 

Chip after chip was torn out in this way, 
and gradually he w^ould work completely 
around the tree. Then the groove was 



92 Forest Neighbors 

made deeper, and after a while it would 
be broadened so that he could get his head 
farther into it. He seemed to think that 
it was very important to get the job done 
as quickly as possible. He worked hard 
and fast, as if felling that tree was the 
only thing in the world that was worth 
doing. 

Once in a while he would stop for a 
moment to feel it with his hands and to 
glance up at the top to see whether it w T as 
getting ready to fall. Several times he 
left his work long enough to take a refresh- 
ing dip in the pond; but he always hurried 
back and pushed on again harder than 
ever. In fact, he sometimes went at it so 
eagerly that he slipped and rolled over on 
his back. 

Little by little he dug away the tree's 
flesh until there was nothing left but its 
heart. At last the tree began to sway and 
crack. The Beaver jumped aside to get out 
of the way. Hundreds and hundreds of 




He worked hard and fast, as if felling that tree was the 
only thing in the world worth doing. 



94 Forest Neighbors 

small, tender branches and delicious little 
twigs and buds came crashing down where 
he could cut them off and eat them, or 
carry them away for a later time. 

And so the Beaver learned his trade, and 
by the time the second winter set in he 
was very nearly full growm. Another 
spring would see him a little larger and a 
little heavier, perhaps, but not very much. 

Would you like to know what the Beaver 
looked like? Prom the tip of his nose to 
the tip of his tail he was a little more than 
three feet long, and weighed between 
twenty-five and thirty pounds. His body 
was heavy and clumsy, and covered with 
thick, soft, grayish under-fur, over w r hich 
were longer hairs of a glistening chestnut- 
brown. Thev made a coat that was water- 
proof as well as very beautiful. 

His fore-feet, or hands, were small and 
black. They had long browm claws that 
were very useful in scooping up mud and 
stones for the dam and for holding onto 



The Beaver and the Two Cities 95 

trees and branches. Between the toes of 
his hind feet were webs like those of a 
duck. No winder that he w^as a good 
swimmer! His head was something like 
that of a gigantic rat, with small, light- 
brown eyes, little round ears covered with 
hair, and a pair of long, orange-colored 
teeth looking out from between parted 
lips. His tail, as I said before, was wide, 
flat, and hard, with no hair on it at all, 
but only a very tough scaly skin. 

And now it was November. The lodges 
were dry and warm. There was a great 
store of branches and billets of wood, and 
everything was ready for winter. But one 
night our hero's father, the wisest old 
beaver in all the town, went out to work 
and never came home again. A trapper 
had found the city — a clever trapper who 
knew just how to go to work. He kept 
away from the lodges as long as he could 
so as not to frighten anyone. Before he 
set a single trap he looked the ground 



96 Forest Neighbors 

over carefully. He found the different 
trails that led back from the water's edge 
toward the timber. He visited the stumps 
of the felled trees, and noticed particularly 
the tooth-marks on the chips. 

No two beavers leave marks that are 
exactly alike. The teeth of one are flatter 
or rounder than those of another, while 
a third may have large or small nicks in 
the edges of his yellow chisels. Each tooth 
leaves its own sign behind it. 

After noticing all these things the 
trapper decided that a particular path in 
the wet grass w^as the one by which a 
certain old beaver always left the water 
when going to his night's labor. He would 
best take that beaver first, for he was 
probably the head of a family and if one 
of his children should be taken first he 
might become frightened and lead all the 
beavers away to some other place. 

So the trapper set a heavy double-spring 
trap in the edge of the water at the foot 



The Beaver and the Two Cities 97 

of the runway, as such a path is called. He 
covered it with a thin sheet of moss. And 
that night as the old beaver came swim- 
ming up to the shore, he put his foot down 
where he shouldn't, and two steel jaws 
flew up and clasped him around the thigh. 
He had felt that grip before. Was not half 
of his right hand gone, and three toes from 
his left hind foot? But this was far worse 
than either of those adventures. It was 
not a hand that was caught this time, nor 
yet a toe, or toes. It was his right hind 
leg, well up toward his body, and the 
strongest beaver that ever lived could not 
have pulled himself free. 

Now when a beaver is frightened, he 
makes for deep water. He thinks that no 
enemy can follow him there and that he 
can swim to his lodge or to the burrow 
that he has made in the bank for a refuge 
in case his house is attacked. So this 
beaver turned and jumped back into deep 
water the way he had come. But he took 



98 Forest Neighbors 

his enemy with him. The heavy trap 
dragged him to the bottom like a stone, 
and the short chain fastened to a stake 
kept him from going far toward home. 

For a few moments the old beaver 
struggled with all his might, and the soft 
black mud rose about him in inky clouds. 
Then he quieted down and lay very, very 
still; and the next day the trapper came 
along and pulled him out by the chain. 

Something else happened that same 
night. Another wise old beaver, the head 
man of another lodge, was killed by a fall- 
ing tree. He ought to have known better 
than to be so careless. I suppose that he 
had felled hundreds of trees and bushes, 
big and little, in the course of his life, and 
he had never yet had an accident. But this 
time he thought he would take one more 
bite after the tree had really begun to fall. 
So he put his head again into the narrow- 
ing notch, and the two parts of the falling 
tree closed upon him with a nip that was 



The Beaver and the Two Cities 99 

worse than his own. He tried to draw 
back, but it was too late, his skull was 
crushed in, and his life went out like a 
candle. 

In a few hours the city lost two of its 
best citizens — the very two whom it ought 
not to have lost. If they had lived, per- 
haps they might have known enough to 
scent the coming danger and to lead their 
families and neighbors away from the 
doomed town to some new stream deeper 
in the heart of the woods. As it was the 
trapper had things all his own way and 
he caught one beaver after another. 

I haven't time to tell you of all the dif- 
ferent ways in which he set his traps or 
the baits that he used, from bacon grease 
to fresh sticks of birch or willow. Nor 
have I time to tell of those other traps 
which had no bait at all, but were 
cunningly hidden where the poor beavers 
were almost certain to step into them 
before they saw them. But our friend's 



100 Forest Neighbors 

mother was one of the next to go, and the 
way his brothers and sisters disappeared, 
one after the other, was enough to break 
one's heart. 

One night the Beaver himself came 
swimming down the pond, homeward 
bound. As he dived for the entrance to 
the canal that led to his lodge he noticed 
some stakes driven into the mud — stakes 
that had never been there before. They 
seemed to form two rows, one on each 
side of his course, but as there was room 
enough for him to pass between them he 
swam straight ahead without stopping. 
His hands were of little use in swimming 
so he had folded them back against his 
body; but his big webbed feet were work- 
ing like the wheels of a twin-screw steamer 
and he was going ahead at a great rate. 

Suddenly, halfway down the line of 
stakes, his breast touched the pan of a 
steel trap, and the jaws flew up as quick 
as a wink and as strong as a vise. For- 



The Beaver and the Two Cities 101 

tunately there was nothing they could take 
hold of. They struck him so hard that 
they lifted him right up, but they caught 
only a few hairs. 

Even a scientific trapper may sometimes 
make mistakes, and when this one came 
around to visit his trap he found it sprung 
but empty. He thought that the beavers 
had learned its secret and sprung it on 
purpose. There was no use, he decided, 
in trying to catch such intelligent animals 
in their own doorway. And he took the 
trap up and set it in a more out-of-the-way 
place. 

But a week later the Beaver was really 
caught by his right hand, and met with 
one of the most thrilling adventures of his 
life. Oh, but that was a glorious night! 
Dark as a pocket, no wind, thick, black 
clouds overhead, and the rain coming down 
in a steady, steady drizzle. Just the kind 
of night that the beavers love, when the 
friendly darkness shuts their little city in 



102 Forest Neighbors 

from all the rest of the world, and they 
feel safe and secure. Then, the long yellow 
teeth tear at the tough wood, the trees 
come tumbling down, and the branches and 
the little logs come hurrying in to increase 
the winter food-piles. 

Often of late the Beaver had noticed an 
unpleasant odor along the shores, an odor 
that frightened him and made him very 
uneasy. Tonight the rain had washed it 
all away, and the woods smelled as sweet 
and clean as if God had just made them 
over new. And on this night the Beaver 
put his hand squarely into a steel trap. 

He was in a shallow part of the pond, 
and the chain was too short for him to 
reach water deep enough to drown him. 
But now a new danger appeared, for there 
on the low moss bank was an otter, glaring 
at him through the darkness. Beaver- 
meat makes a very good meal for an otter, 
and the Beaver knew it. And he knew, 
also, how helpless he was, either to get 



The Beaver and the Two Cities 103 

away or to fight, with that heavy trap on 
his arm and the chain binding him to the 
stake. 

The Beaver trembled from his nose to 
the end of his tail, and whimpered and 
cried like a baby. But as the otter 
advanced toward him there came a sudden 
sharp click, and in another instant the 
otter too was struggling for life. Two 
traps had been set in the shallow water. 
The Beaver had found one and the otter 
the other. 

The full story of that night, with all its 
fear and suffering and pain, will never be 
written; and probably it is as well it should 
not be. The Beaver soon found that he 
was out of the otter's reach, and with his 
fears relieved on that point he set to work 
to free himself from the trap. 

Round and round he twisted, till there 
came a little snap, and the bone of his 
arm broke short off in the steel jaws. Then 
for a long, long time he pulled and pulled 



104 Forest Neighbors 

with all his might, and at last the tough 
skin was rent apart, and the muscles and 
sinew T s w r ere torn out by the roots. His 
right hand was gone, and he was so weak 
and faint that it seemed as if all the 
strength and life of his whole body had 
gone with it. No matter. He was free, 
and he swam away to the nearest burrow 
and lay down to rest. 

The otter tried to do the same, but he 
was caught by the thick of the thigh, and 
his case was a hopeless one. Next day the 
trapper found him alive, but very meek 
and quiet, worn out with fear and useless 
struggles. In the other trap w T ere a 
beaver's hand and some long shreds of 
flesh and sinew that must once have 
reached well up into the shoulder. 

We shall have to hurry over the events 
of the next winter — the last winter of 
the city's history. Nature was good to the 
Beaver and the skin soon grew over 
the torn stump. But the pond was cov- 



The Beaver and the Two Cities 105 

ered with ice by the time the wound was 
healed. The beavers, of whom there were 
only half as many as there had been a few 
weeks before, kept close in their lodges and 
burrows. For a time they lived in peace 
and quiet, and no more of them w T ere 
caught. Then the trapper took to setting 
his traps through the ice, and before long 
matters were worse than ever. 

By spring the few beavers that remained 
were so thoroughly frightened that the old 
tow T n was abandoned, once and forever. 
The lodges fell to pieces, the burrows 
caved in, the dam gave way, the water 
drained out of the pond and canals, and 
that was the end of the city. 

Yet not quite the end after all. The 
beavers had vanished from their old home 
but their work remained. The broad 
meadows were cleared of timber by their 
teeth, and covered with rich black soil by 
the flooding waters of their pond. There 
is an Indian legend which says that after 



106 Forest Neighbors 

the Creator separated the land from the 
water He had gigantic beavers smooth it 
down and prepare it for mankind. How- 
ever that may be, the farmers for years to 
come will have reason to bless those busy 
little citizens. 

One city was gone. But the Beaver, 
young, strong, and restless, could not be 
satisfied to live in a burrow in a bank, 
and before long he started into the wilder- 
ness to hunt for something. He hardly 
knew what it was he was looking for, but 
he could not remain idle any longer. 
Within a few days he met another young 
beaver who had been driven out of the old 
city, and she decided to become his wife 
and go with him in his search for the some- 
thing that would satisfy them. 

Soon the two beavers knew very well 
what it was they were looking for, a new 
location for a new city. They wandered 
about for some time and examined several 
spots along the beds of different little 



The Beaver and the Two Cities 107 

rivers, none of which seemed to be just 
right. But at last they found, in the very 
heart of the wilderness, a place where a 
shallow stream ran over a hard stony 
bottom, and there they set to work. 

It was a very fine location in every way. 
At one side stood a large tree, so close that 
it could probably be used as a support for 
the dam when the latter was long enough 
to reach it. The ground was low and flat 
on both sides for some distance back from 
the banks, so that the pond would have 
plenty of room to spread out. It was by 
far the best place they had seen. 

First alder bushes, with their bark 
peeled off, were laid lengthwise of the 
current. For a time the water filtered 
through them with hardly a pause. Then 
the beavers began laying mud and stones 
and moss on this brush foundation, scoop- 
ing them up with their hands, and holding 
them under their chins as they waddled or 
swam to the dam. The Beaver himself was 



108 Forest Neighbors 

not very good at this sort of work, because 
he had lost his right hand in the trap. But 
his wife was more than willing to do her 
share, and he did the best he could. 
Together they accomplished a great deal. 

The mud and the grass were placed on 
the upper face of the dam where the water 
packed them in among the brush. Little 
by little a smooth bank of earth was made, 
backed up on the lower side by a tangle 
of sticks and poles. The beavers made the 
top very level and straight and from one 
end to the other the water trickled over in 
little rills. This was important, for if all 
the water had flowed over in one place the 
stream might have been so strong and 
rapid as to eat into the dam and perhaps 
carry it away. 

The first year the beavers did not try to 
make the dam more than about a foot high. 
There was much other work to be done — 
a house to be built and food to be laid up 
for the winter. If they spent too much 



The Beaver and the Two Cities 109 

time on one thing they might freeze or 
starve before spring. 

A little way above the dam was a small 
island, and here they built their lodge, a 
hollow mound of sticks and mud, with a 
small, cave-like room in the center, from 
which two tunnels led out under the pond. 
The trappers call these tunnels " angles. " 
The walls were masses of earth and wood 
and small stones, so thick and solid that 
even Aleck, the moss-back, would have 
found it hard to break them open with an 
axe. And it was quite certain that no 
prowling otter or lynx could get in. The 
beavers smoothed the walls with their 
hands and whacked them with their tails, 
and the sun baked them. 

At the very top of the mound there was 
no mud, nothing but closely tangled sticks 
through which a breath of fresh air found 
its way now and then. In spite of this 
ventilation, however, the atmosphere of 
the lodge was very, very bad. But beavers 



The Beaver and the Two Cities 111 

do not need much oxygen, and these two 
did not seem to .mind. 

In all other ways the house was neat 
and clean. The floor of the room was only 
two or three inches above the level of the 
water in the angles, and would naturally 
have been a bed of mud, but they mixed 
little twigs with it, and stamped and 
pounded it down till it was hard and 
smooth. And here the beaver's tail was 
useful again. He was fond of slapping 
things with it, and it was just the right 
shape, so he and his wife pounded away 
until they had the kind of dry floor they 
wanted. Then they carried in some long 
grass for their beds, and the lodge was 
finished and ready. 

And now if you could watch the beavers 
you would see them coming home to rest 
in the early dawn, after a night's work 
of felling timber. They swim across the 
pond toward the island with only the tops 
of their little heads showing above the 



112 Forest Neighbors 

water. When they are near the lodge each 
tail-rudder gives a slap and a twist, and 
they dive for the submarine door of one of 
the angles. In another minute they are 
swimming along the dark, narrow tunnel, 
making the water surge around them. 
Suddenly the roof of the angle rises and 
their heads pop up into the air. A few 
feet farther on they enter the room of the 
lodge, with its level floor and its low arched 
roof. And there in the darkness they lie 
down on their grass beds and sleep the 
most of the day. It is good to have a home 
of your own when the night's work is 
done. 

When the lodge was finished they 
decided to dig a burrow to which they 
might go if anything ever happened to the 
lodge. They chose a place where the bank 
was high and there dug a long tunnel run- 
ning back ten or fifteen feet into the 
ground. Its mouth, like that of the angle, 
was deep under the water. The digging 



The Beaver and the Two Cities 113 

of the burrow was very hard work, since 
every few minutes they had to stop and 
come to the surface for breath. 

Mght after night they scooped and 
shovelled, rushing the job as fast as they 
knew how but making pretty slow work 
of it just the same. It was done at last, 
however, and then they felt safer. From 
its mouth in the depths of the pond it 
sloped gradually upward to a little room 
under the roots of a large birch tree. 
Here, where a few tiny holes were not 
likely to be noticed from the outside, two 
or three small openings, almost hidden by 
the moss and dead leaves, let in some air 
and a little light. The big tree made a 
solid roof overhead and the room was 
large enough, with a little crowding, for a 
whole family of beavers. 

There was only one other hard thing left 
to do. That was to gather the wood which, 
with its bark, would serve as food through 
the winter. They brought in branches and 



The Beaver and the Two Cities 115 

billets as fast as they could, until this too 
was finally finished. 

The very last thing that the beavers did 
that fall was to put another coat of mud 
on the outside of the lodge, and to see that 
the dam was in the best possible condition. 
No repairing could be done after the ice 
came, and if the dam should give way at 
any time during the winter the water 
would be drained from the pond. Then 
the entrances of the lodge and the burrow 
would be left open so that any animal that 
happened to pass that way could come in. 

At last there came a quiet, gray day, 
when the big snow-flakes came floating 
lazily down, some to lose themselves in the 
water and some to robe the woods and 
shores in white. At night-fall the clouds 
cleared away, the stars shone forth, and 
the air grew colder and keener. Long 
crystal spears shot out across the pond, 
and before morning a sheet of ice like 
glass had spread from shore to shore. The 



116 Forest Neighbors 

beavers were rather glad it had come. 
They were probably shut in for the winter, 
but there was a little world of their own 
down under the ice and snow. 

Their lodge was their home and just 
outside was the big pile of wood that they 
had worked so hard to gather. One of 
the entrances was shorter and straighter 
than the other and through this short one 
they used to bring in sticks from the heap. 
They placed them on the floor between the 
beds, where they could eat the bark at 
their leisure. If they grew restless and 
wanted to go somewhere, they could 
explore the bottom of the pond and dig 
up the big, luscious lily roots. Altogether 
they had a very peaceful time, a time of 
rest from the hard work of the past 
summer, and of growing fat and strong 
for the labor of the summer to come. 

In May, the babies came — five pretty 
children, about as large as rats, and cov- 
ered with thick, soft, silky, reddish-brown 



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o 

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a. 
era' 

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118 Forest Neighbors 

fur. They, too, were very playful, as their 
father and mother had been in their own 
youthful days. 

After a little the old beavers began to 
bring in little twigs, about the size of lead 
pencils, for the children to eat. If you had 
been there and your eyes had been sharp 
enough to see in such a gloomy house, you 
might have noticed the youngsters exercis- 
ing their brand new teeth, and learning to 
prop themselves with their tails while 
they sat up, holding the sticks in their 
baby hands, and nibbling the bark. 

And wouldn't you have liked to be there 
on the night when they first went swim- 
ming down the long dark tunnel; and, 
rising to the surface, looked around on 
their world of woods and water. They saw 
for the first time the quiet pond, with its 
glassy smoothness broken only by their 
own ripples; the tall trees, lifting their 
fingers toward the sky; and the stars, 
looking down with still, unwinking eyes on 



The Beaver and the Two Cities 119 

another family of babies that had come to 
live and love and be happy for a little 
while on God's earth. 

One of the children was killed by an 
otter that summer, but the other four grew 
up and became strong and useful. 

The babies were not the only addition to 
the new city during that year. About mid- 
summer another pair of beavers came and 
built a lodge near the upper end of the 
pond. It was a busy season for everybody. 
The food-sticks from which the bark had 
been peeled during the winter were now 
used for construction material. The dam 
was built several inches higher and was 
lengthened to the buttress-tree on one side, 
and for a distance of two or three rods on 
the other, so as to keep the water from 
flowing around the ends. 

As the dam was made higher the water 
rose higher in the pond, and it became 
necessary to build up the floor of the lodge 
in order to keep it from being flooded. 



120 Forest Neighbors 

That made the room so much smaller that 
they had to raise the roof in some way. 
So they hollowed it out inside and added 
more sticks and mud on the outside. In 
the same way they made the lodge longer 
and broader, because the children were 
growing fast and needed more room. 

They dug more burrows in the shore of 
the pond, for you can't have too many of 
them. Then they gathered a much larger 
stock of food wood, for there were six 
mouths, instead of two, to be fed through 
the coming winter. The father and mother 
worked very hard, and even the babies 
carried home small branches and mended 
small leaks in the dam. The second pair 
of beavers was also busy with lodge and 
burrow and storehouse, and so the days 
slipped by very rapidly. 

Once that year a man came to town, but 
he did not do anything very dreadful. He 
was a naturalist who was making a long 
walking trip through the woods just to see 



The Beaver and the Two Cities 121 

what he could see. He was very much 
surprised and greatly delighted when he 
came upon the beaver city. Of course he 
wanted to see the beavers at work, so 
he camped about half a mile away and 
when night came he made a small hole in 
the dam. Then he climbed a tree and 
waited for them to come and mend it. It 
was bright moonlight, and he thought he 
would see the whole thing and learn some 
very wonderful secrets. 

The Beaver was at work in the woods 
not very far away, and presently he came 
down to the edge of the pond, rolling a 
heavy piece of birch wood before him. He 
noticed at once that the water was falling, 
and he started straight for the dam to see 
what was the matter. The naturalist saw 
him coming, a dark speck moving swiftly 
down the pond, with a long V-shaped ripple 
spreading out behind him. But the Beaver 
was doing some thinking while he swam. 

He had never before known the water 



122 Forest Neighbors 

to fall so suddenly and rapidly. There 
must be a very bad break in the dam. How 
could it have happened? It looked sus- 
picious. It looked very suspicious indeed; 
and just before he reached the dam he 
stopped to look around, and at once caught 
sight of the naturalist up in the tree. The 
Beaver 's tail rose in the air and came down 
on the water with the loudest whack that 
had ever echoed across the pond, a stroke 
that sent the spray flying in every direc- 
tion, and that might have been heard three- 
quarters of a mile away. His wife heard 
it, and paused in her work of felling a tree ; 
the children heard it, and the neighbors 
heard it; they all knew it meant business 
and they made off for their lodges and 
burrows as fast as they could go. 

The Beaver dived like a loon and swam 
for dear life, and he did not come to the 
surface again till he had reached the 
farther end of the pond and was out of 
sight behind a grassy point. There he 



The Beaver and the Two Cities 123 

stayed, now and then striking the water 
with his tail as a signal that the danger 
was not yet over. It isn't every animal 
that can use his tail as a stool, as a rudder, 
as a third hind leg, as a trowel for smooth- 
ing the floor of his house, and as a tocsin 
for warning his fellow-citizens. 

The naturalist roosted in the tree until 
his teeth were chattering and he was fairly 
blue with cold. Then he scrambled down 
and w T ent back to his camp, where he had 
a violent chill. The next night it rained, 
and as he did not want to get wet there 
was nothing to do but stay in his tent. 
When he visited the pond again the dam 
had been repaired and the water was up 
to its usual level. He decided that watch- 
ing beavers wasn't very interesting, hardly 
worth the trouble it cost; and he guessed 
he knew enough about them anyway. So 
the next day he packed up his camping 
outfit and went on. 

I don't believe you care to hear all about 



124 m Forest Neighbors 

the years that followed. They were years 
of peace and growth, of marriages and 
home-building, of many births and few 
deaths, of winter rest and summer labor, 
and of quiet domestic happiness. The city 
grew and grew, and our Beaver and his 
wife were the original inhabitants, the 
first settlers, the most looked-up-to of all 
the citizens. You are not to suppose, how- 
ever, that the Beaver was mayor of the 
town. There was no city government. 
The family was the unit, and each house- 
hold was a law unto itself. But still he 
was the oldest, the wisest, the most know- 
ing of all the beavers in the city, just as 
his father had been before him in another 
town. 

But this could not last forever. A great 
calamity w^as coming — a calamity beside 
which the slow destruction of the first 
town would seem tame and uninteresting. 

One bright February day the Beaver and 
his wife left their lodge to look for lily 



The Beaver and the Two Cities 125 

roots. They found a big fat one and were 
just about to begin their feast, when they 
heard foot-steps on the ice over their heads, 
and the voices of several men talking 
eagerly. They made for the nearest bur- 
row as fast as they could go, and stayed 
there the rest of the day, and when they 
returned to their lodge they found — but 
let me tell you about it. 

The men were Indians and half-breeds, 
and they laughed and shouted over the 
beaver city. Around this pond there must 
be enough beaver-skins to keep them in 
groceries and tobacco and wiiiskey for a 
long time to come. But to find a city is 
one thing and to get hold of the beavers 
is another and a very different one. Still, 
one of the Indians was an elderly man 
who in the old days had trapped beaver 
in Canada for the Hudson Bay Company, 
and he directed them how to go about it. 

First of all they chopped holes in the ice 
and drove a line of stakes across the stream 



126 Forest Neighbors 

just above the pond, so that no one might 
escape in that direction. Then, by pound- 
ing on the ice, and cutting more holes in 
it here and there, they found the entrances 
to all the lodges and most of the burrows. 
These they closed with stakes driven into 
the bottom. They did not find the burrow 
w^here our Beaver and his wife had gone, 
however. 

The men were about to break open the 
roofs of the lodges when the old man pro- 
posed that they should play a trick on one 
of the beaver families — a trick which his 
father had taught him when he was a boy 
and when there were many beavers in the 
woods around Lake Superior. He told his 
companions what it was and they thought 
it would be great fun. For a time they 
were very busy chopping ice and driving 
stakes, and then all was quiet again. 

By and by one of our Beaver's children 
began to feel hungry, and as his father and 
mother had not come home he decided to 



The Beaver and the Two Cities 127 

go out to the wood-pile and get something 
to eat. So he took a header from his bed 
into the water, and swam down the angle. 
The door had been unbarred again and he 
passed without any trouble, but when he 
reached the pile he found around it a fence 
made of stakes set so close together that 
he could not pass between them. 

The young beaver swam clear around 
the fence and at last found one gap just 
large enough to let him go through. He 
went in for his wood, and as he did so his 
back touched a small twig that had been 
thrust down through a hole in the ice. 
The beaver did not notice the twig, but 
the watching Indians saw it move and 
knew that a beaver had entered the trap. 

The little beaver picked out a nice stick, 
small enough for him to carry, and started 
to return to the lodge. But he could not 
find that gap in the fence. Where was it 
anyhow? He swam around and around. 
This was the place, he was sure. Here 



128 Forest Neighbors 

were two stakes between which he had 
certainly passed as he came in, but now 
another stake stood squarely between 
them. 

Again he swam all around the wood- 
pile, looking for a way out, and poking his 
little brown nose between the stakes, but 
there was no way of escape, and when he 
came back to the entrance and found it 
still closed his last hope died and he gave 
up in despair. His heart and lungs and 
general circulation had been so made that 
he might live for many minutes under the 
water, but they could not keep him alive 
indefinitely. Overhead was the ice and all 
around him was that cruel fence. Only a 
rod away was home, where his brothers 
and sisters were waiting for him, and 
where there was air to breathe and life to 
live — but he could not reach it. You have 
all heard or read how a drowning man 
feels, and I suppose it is much the same 
with a drowning beaver. 



The Beaver and the Two Cities 129 

By and by a hooked stick came down 
through a hole in the ice and drew him out, 
the gate w r as unbarred, the twig w r as 
replaced, and the Indians w T aited for 
another hungry little beaver to come for 
his dinner. That's enough. You know 
now what the parents found when they 
came home — or rather, what they did not 
find. 

It would have taken too long to catch 
all the beavers this way, so the Indians 
finally broke the dam and let the water out 
of the pond. Then they tore open the 
lodges and all the burrows they could find, 
and the inhabitants were put to the — not 
the sword, but the axe and the club. Of 
all those who had been so happy and pros- 
perous, the old Beaver and his wife were 
the only ones who escaped; and their lives 
were spared only because the Indians 
failed to find their hiding-place. 

That was the end of the second city, but 
it was not quite the end of the beavers. 



130 Forest Neighbors 

They went a few miles upstream, and there 
they dug a short burrow in the bank and 
tried to make a new home. But the 
mother 's energy and strength were gone, 
and in a short while she died. The Beaver 
left the burrow, and once more set out into 
the world — alone. 

I really think his heart was broken. For 
several months he wandered up and down 
the banks of streams and rivers, restless 
and unhappy. When summer was nearly 
over he came, one day, upon a long narrow 
pond, that lies just northeast of the Glim- 
merglass. Its shores were low and 
swampy, and its waters drained into the 
Glimmerglass through a stream only a few 
rods in length. 

On the shore of this pond the Beaver 
dug a shallow burrow, and prepared to 
stay a while. He was aging rapidly. 
Such a little time ago he had seemed in the 
very prime of life, and had been one of 
the largest and handsomest beavers in the 



The Beaver and the Two Cities 131 

woods, with fur of the thickest and softest, 
and a weight of probably sixty pounds. 
Xow he was thin and poor, his hair was 
falling out, his teeth were losing their 
sharpness and becoming almost useless for 
felling trees, and even his flat tail was 
growing thicker and more rounded. When 
he brought it down with all his might on 
the surface of the water, its whack was 
not nearly so loud or so startling as it 
used it be. 

Yet the old instinct flamed up once more. 
Or shall we say the old love of work and 
of using the powers that God had given 
him? There came a dark, rainy autumn 
night, such as he loved. All his life he 
had been an engineer, and now he left his 
little burrow, swam down the pond to its 
outlet, and began to build a dam. He set 
to work cutting alder bushes and laying 
them in the bed of the stream. God knows 
why he did it or what he was thinking 
about as he dragged those cuttings into 



132 Forest Neighbors 

the stream. Sometimes I wonder if a wild 
dream of a new lodge, a new mate, a new 
home, and a new city was not flitting 
through his poor befogged old brain. 

It was only a day or two later that Aleck, 
the moss-back, pushing up the stream in 
his dug-out canoe, found the alder cuttings 
with the marks of the Beaver's dull teeth 
on their butts. Aleck's business was not 
trapping, but he was very much excited at 
having found a beaver, so he bought a trap 
and set it. Only a few nights later the 
Beaver set his foot into it, jumped for deep 
water, and was drowned like his father 
before him. 

Afterward, Aleck stretched the skin on 
a hoop made from a little birch sapling. I 
happened to stop at his shack one day and 
he showed it to me. It was not a ver} r 
good skin, for, as I said the Beaver had 
been losing his hair, but Aleck thought he 
might get a dollar or two for it. Whether 
he needed the dollar more than the Beaver 



The Beaver and the Two Cities 133 

needed his skin was a question I did not 
ask him. 

As we left the shack I noticed the tail 
lying on the ground just outside the door. 

" Why didn't you eat it? " I asked. 
" Don't you know that a beaver's tail is 
supposed to be one of the finest delicacies 
in the woods? " 

" Huh! " said Aleck. " I'd rather have 
salt pork." 



Pointers From a Porcupine 
Quill 



—J hj wasn t handsome — the orig- 
in inal owner of this quill — and I 
E| can't say that he was very 




smart. He was only a slow-witted, homely 
old porky who once lived by the Glimmer- 
glass. But in spite of his slow wi.ts and 
his homeliness a great many things hap- 
pened to him in the course of his life. 

He was born in a hollow hemlock log, 
on a wild April morning, when the north 
wind was whipping the lake with snow, 
and when winter seemed to have come back 
for a season. The Glimmerglass was 
neither glimmering nor glassy that morn- 
ing, but the Porcupine and his mother 
were snug and warm in their wooden nest, 

135 



136 Forest Neighbors 

and thev cared little for the storm that 

«/ 

was raging outside. 

When our Porcupine discovered America 
he was covered all over with soft, furry, 
dark-brown hair. If you had searched 
carefully along the middle of his back you 
might possibly have found the points of 
his first quills, just peeping through the 
skin; but the thick fur hid them from 
sight and touch unless you knew just how 
and where to look for them. 

He was a very large baby, larger even 
than a new-born bear cub, and no doubt 
his mother felt a good deal of pride in his 
size and general pertness. She was cer- 
tainly very careful of him and very anxious 
for his safety, for she kept him out of 
sight, and no one ever saw him during 
those first days and weeks of his baby- 
hood. She did not propose to have any 
lynxes or wild-cats fondling him until his 
quills w r ere grown. After that they might 
give him all the love-pats they pleased. 



Pointers from a Porcupine Quill 137 

He grew rapidly, as all porcupine babies 
do. Long hairs, tipped with yellowish- 
white, came out through the dense fur, and 
by and by the quills began to show. His 
teeth were lengthening, too, and before he 
was two months old he was quite able to 
travel down to the beach and feast on the 
tender lily-pads and arrow-head leaves that 
grew in the shallow water, within easy 
reach from fallen tree-trunks. 

One June day as the Porcupine and his 
mother were fishing for lily-pads, each of 
them out on the end of a big log, a boy 
came down the steep bank that rose almost 
from the water's edge. He wasn't a very 
attractive boy. His clothes were dirty and 
torn — and so was his face. His hat was 
gone, and his hair had not seen a comb for 
weeks. The mosquitoes and black-flies 
and no-see- 'ems had bitten him until his 
skin was covered with blotches and his eye- 
lids were so swollen that he could hardly 



138 Forest Neighbors 

see. And, worst of all, lie looked as if he 
were dying of starvation. There was 
almost nothing left of him but skin and 
bones, and his clothing hung upon him as 
it would upon a framework of sticks. 

The Porcupine would probably have said 
that it was the wrong time of year for 
starving; and from his point of view he 
was certainly right. June, in the woods, is 
the season of plenty for everyone but man. 
Man thinks he must have bread made of 
w^heat-flour, and that doesn't grow on pine 
or maple trees, nor yet in the tamarack 
swamps. But there was no wild, fierce 
glare in the boy's eyes, such a light of 
hunger as the story-books tell us is to be 
seen in the eyes of the wolf and the lynx, 
when they have not eaten for days and 
days, and when the snow lies deep in the 
forest and famine comes stalking through 
the trees. He was too weak and miserable 
to do any glaring, and his stomach was 



Pointers from a Porcupine Quill 139 

aching so hard from eating green goose- 
berries that he could scarcely think of 
anything else. 

But his face brightened a very little 
• when he saw the old porcupine, and he 
picked up a heavy stick and waded out 
beside her log. She clacked her teeth 
together angrily as he approached; but he 
paid no attention, so she drew herself into 
a ball, with her head down and her nose 
covered with her forepaws. Across her 
back and down each side was a belt or 
girdle of quills, the largest and heaviest on 
her whole body. These she could make 
stand up on end when she wanted to, and 
now they stood up as straight as young 
spruce-trees. Their tips were dark brown, 
but the rest of their length was nearly 
white. When you looked at her from 
behind she seemed to have a pointed white 
ruffle, edged with black, tied around the 
middle of her body. 

But the boy wasn't thinking about' ruf- 




ft£* 



He picked up a heavy stick and waded out beside the log. 



Pointers from a Porcupine Quill 141 

fles, for he didn't care what she did with 
her quills. He gave her such a thrust 
with his stick that she had to grab at the 
log with both hands to keep from being 
shoved into the water. That left her nose 
unprotected, and he brought the stick 
down across it once, twice, three times. 
Then he picked her up by one foot very 
gingerly, and carried her off. Our Porky 
never saw his mother again. 

Half a mile away the boy came to a 
woman and a little girl. I shan't describe 
them except to say that they were even 
worse off than he, for the woman and her 
two children had been lost in the woods 
for nearly two weeks. 

" I've got a porky," said the boy. 

He dropped his burden on the ground, 
and they all stood around and looked at it. 

They were hungry — oh, so hungry ! — 
but for some reason they did not seem 
very eager to begin. An old porcupine 
with her clothes on is not the most appe- 



142 Forest Neighbors 

tizing of feasts; and they had no knife 
with which to skin her, no salt to season 
the meat, no fire to cook it, and no matches 
with which to start one. Rubbing two 
sticks together is a very good way of start- 
ing a fire when you are in a book, but it 
doesn't work very well in the Great Tah- 
quamenon Sw T amp. And yet, somehow or 
other, they ate that porcupine. And it did 
them good. When the searchers found 
them a week or two later the woman and 
the boy were dead, but the little girl was 
still alive, and for all I know she is living 
to this day. 

The young Porcupine ought to have 
mourned deeply for his mother, but I 
grieve to say he did nothing of the kind. 
I doubt if he was even very lonesome. 
His brain was smaller and smoother than 
yours is supposed to be; its wrinkles were 
few and not very deep; and it may be that 
his bump of love for his mother was quite 
polished, or even that there was not any 



Pointers from a Porcupine Quill 143 

bump at all. Anyhow he got along very 
well without her — much more easily than 
the woman and the boy and girl could 
have. He watched stolidly w^hile the boy 
killed her and carried her off, and a little 
later he w^as eating lily-pads again. 

As far as his future w x as concerned, he 
had little reason for worrying. He knew 
pretty well how to take care of himself, 
for that knowledge comes early to young 
porcupines. Really there wasn't much to 
learn. His quills would protect him from 
most of his enemies, and he need never 
suffer for food, as the lynx might. Of all 
the animals in the woods the porcupine 
is probably the safest from starvation, for 
he can eat anything from the soft green 
leaves of the water plants to the bark 
and the small twigs of the tallest hemlock 
tree. Summer and winter his store-house 
is always full. The young lions may lack 
and suffer hunger, but the young porky 
has only to climb a tree and set his 



144 Forest Neighbors 

teeth to work. All the woods are his 
huckleberry. 

And, by the w T ay, our Porcupine's teeth 
w r ere a great help to him, especially the 
front ones. They were long and sharp 
and yellow, and there were two in the 
upper jaw and two in the lower, with a 
wide gap on each side between them and 
the molars. They kept right on growing 
as long as he lived, and there is no telling 
how far they would have gone if there 
had been nothing to stop them. Fortu- 
nately he did a great deal of eating and 
chewing, and the constant rubbing kept 
them worn down, and at the same time 
sharpened them. Like a beaver's, they 
were formed of thin shells of hard enamel 
in front, backed up by softer pulp behind. 
Of course the soft parts wore away first 
and left the enamel projecting in sharp, 
chisel-like edges that could gnaw crumbs 
from a hickory axe-handle. 

The next few months were pleasant ones 



wWrM 
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146 Forest Neighbors 

for the Porcupine, with plenty to eat, and 
nothing to do but keep his jaws going. 
By and by the leaves began to fall, and 
whenever the Porky walked abroad they 
rustled around him like silk skirts going 
down the aisle of a church. A little later 
the beechnuts came down from the sky, 
and he feasted more luxuriously than ever. 
His four yellow chisels tore the brown 
shells open, his molars ground the sweet 
kernels into meal, and he ate and ate till 
his short legs could hardly keep his fat 
little belly off the ground. 

Then came the first light snow, and his 
feet left tracks that were something like 
a baby's — that is, if you had a good 
imagination. The snow grew deeper and 
deeper, and after a while he had to fairly 
plow his way from the hollow log where 
he slept to the tree where he took his 
meals. It was hard work, for his clumsy 
legs were not made for wading, and at 
every step he had to lift and drag him- 



Pointers from a Porcupine Quill 147 

self forward, and then let his body drop 
while he shifted his feet. A porcupine's 
feet will not go of themselves the way 
other animals' do. They have to be picked 



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up one at a time and lifted forward as far 
as they can reach — not very far at the 
best, as they are fastened to the ends of 
very short legs. It almost seems as if he 
could run faster if he could drop them off 
and leave them behind. 

One evening, when the snow was begin- 



148 Forest Neighbors 

ning to freeze again after a thawing day, 
Porky lay down to rest for a few minutes. 
When he started on, some of his quills 
were fast in the hardening crust and had 
to be left behind. But no matter how 
difficult the walk might be there was 
alway a good square meal at the end of 
it, and he pushed bravely on till he reached 
his dinner-table. 

Sometimes he stayed in the same tree 
for days at a time, quenching his thirst 
with snow and sleeping in a crotch. 

He was not by any means the only 
porcupine in the woods around the 
Glimmerglass, although w T eeks sometimes 
passed without his seeing any of his rela- 
tives. At other times there w T ere from 
one to half a dozen porkies in the trees 
close by, and when they happened to feel 
like it they would call back and forth to 
each other in queer, harsh voices, that 
sounded as if they were complaining about 
the weather. 




Sometimes he stayed in the same tree a day or two. 



150 Forest Neighbors 

One afternoon, when he and another 
porcupine were occupying trees next 
each other, two land-lookers came along 
and camped for the night between them. 
Earlier in the day the men had crossed 
the trail of a pack of w r olves, and they 
talked of it as they cut their firewood, 
cooked their supper, and made their bed 
of balsam boughs. One of them was a 
half-breed Indian and he was very much 
afraid that they would have visitors before 
morning, but the white man only laughed 
at him. 

The meal was hardly finished when they 
lay down between their blankets — the 
white man to sleep, and the half-breed 
to listen, listen, listen for the coming of 
the wolves. Beyond the camp-fire's little 
circle of ruddy light, vague shadows 
moved mysteriously, as if living things 
were prowling around among the trees 
and only waiting for him to fall asleep. 
Yet he heard no w r olf-howl, nor anything 



Pointers from a Porcupine Quill 151 

else to break the silence of the winter 
night, save possibly the dropping of a 
dead branch, or the splitting open of a 
tree-trunk, torn apart by the frost. And 
by and by, in spite of himself the half- 
breed's eyelids began to droop. 

But somebody else was awake, and 
tempted with a great temptation. The 
second porcupine, not ours, had caught 
the fragrance of coffee and bacon. Here 
were new odors, different from anything 
that had ever before tickled his nostrils. 
Strange odors they were, but very deli- 
cious. He waited till the land-lookers were 
snoring, and then started down the tree. 
When he was half-way to the ground a 
cloud of smoke rose from the camp-fire. 
Here was another new odor, but with 
nothing pleasant about it. It stung his 
nostrils and made his eyes smart, and he 
scrambled up again as fast as he could 
go. His claws and quills rattled on the 
bark. The half-breed Indian woke with 



152 Forest Neighbors 

a start. He had heard something — he 
was sure he had — the wolves were coming, 
and he gave the white man a punch in 
the ribs. 

" Wake up, wake up, m'shoor! " he 
whispered, excitedly. " The wolves are 
coming. I can hear them on the snow." 

The w T hite man was up in a twinkling, 
but by that time the porcupine had settled 
himself in a crotch, out of reach of the 
smoke, and the woods were silent again. 
The two listened with all their ears, but 
they could not hear a sound. 

" You must have been dreaming, Louis," 
said the white man. 

The half-breed insisted that he had 
really heard the patter of the wolves' feet 
on the snow x -crust, but the timber cruiser 
laughed at him and lay down to sleep 
again. An hour later the same thing hap- 
pened again, and this time the white man 
was angry. 

" Don't you wake me again, Louis. 



Pointers from a Porcupine Quill 153 

You're so rattled you don't know what 
you hear." 

Louis did not answer, but neither did 
he let himself go to sleep again. The 
fire was dying down, and little by little 
the smoke cloud grew thinner and thinner 
until it disappeared. Then the half-breed 
heard the same sound once more, but from 
the tree overhead and not from across the 
snow, as he had thought. He waited and 
watched, and soon a dark-brown animal, 
two or three feet long and about the shape 
of an egg, came scrambling cautiously 
down the trunk. The porky reached the 
ground safely, and hunted among the tin 
plates and the knives and forks until he 
found a piece of bacon rind; but he got 
just one taste of it and then Louis hit him 
over the head with a club. The next 
morning Louis made porcupine soup for 
breakfast, and it tasted very good, but 
the white man insisted on calling it 
"wolf." 



154 Forest Neighbors 

Our Porky had seen it all. He waited 
till the men had tramped away through 
the woods, with their packs on their backs 
and their snow-shoes on their feet, and 
then he, too, came down from his tree to 
investigate. His friend's skin lay on the 
snow not very far away, but he paid no 
attention to it. The bacon rind was what 
interested him most, and he chewed and 
gnawed at it with great gusto. It was 
the first time in all his gluttonous little 
life that he had ever tasted the flavor of 
salt or wood-smoke; and neither lily-pads, 
nor beechnuts, nor berries nor anything 
else in all the woods could compare with 
it. Life was worth living if only for this 
one experience. It may be that he stowed 
a dim memory of it away in some dark 
corner of his brain, and hoped that fortune 
would some day be good to him and send 
him another bacon rind. 

The long, long winter dragged slowly 
on, the snow piled up higher and deeper, 



Pointers from a Porcupine Quill 155 

and the cold grew sharper and keener. 
Night after night the pitiless stars seemed 
sucking every last bit of warmth out of 
the old earth and leaving it dead and 
frozen forever. These were the nights 
when the rabbits came out of their bur- 
rows and stamped up and down their 
runways for hours at a time, trying by 
exercise to keep from freezing to death, 
and when the deer dared not lie down to 
sleep. And hunger came with the cold 
and the deep snow. The buck and the 
doe had to live on hemlock twigs till they 
grew thin and poor. The partridges were 
often buried in the drifting snow and 
starved to death. The lynxes and wild- 
cats hunted and hunted and hunted, and 
found no prey; and it was a good thing 
for the bears and the woodchucks that 
they could sleep all winter and did not 
need food. Only the Porcupine had plenty 
and to spare. Starvation had no terrors 
for him. 



156 Forest Neighbors 

But the Porcupine found that the hunger 
of another might mean danger for him. 
In ordinary times most of the animals left 
him severely alone. They knew better 
than to tackle such a living pin-cushion 
as he; and if any of them did try it one 
touch was generally enough. But when 
you are ready to perish with hunger, you 
will take risks which at other times you 
would not even think about. 

And so it happened that one February 
afternoon, as the Porcupine was trundling 
himself over the snow-crust, a fierce- 
looking animal with dark fur, bushy tail, 
and pointed nose, sprang at him from 
behind a tree. He tried to catch the Porky 
by the throat, where the quills did not 
grow and where there was nothing but 
soft warm fur. But the Porcupine knew 
just what to do, and he promptly made 
himself into a prickly ball, very much as 
his mother had done seven or eight months 
before, with his face down and his quills 



Pointers from a Porcupine Quill 157 

sticking out defiantly. But this time it 
did not work so well. His enemy was a 
small animal known as a fisher, and his 
sharp little nose dug into the snow and 
worked its way closer and closer to where 
the Porcupine's jugular vein was waiting 
to be tapped. That fisher must have 
understood his business, for he had chosen 
the one and only way in which a porcupine 
may be successfully attacked by an animal. 
For once in his life our Porcupine was 
really scared. If the fisher had got another 
inch closer he would have won the game. 
But he was in such a hurry for something 
to eat that he grew reckless. He did not 
notice that he had wheeled half way round 
and that his hind-quarters were alongside 
the Porcupine's. Xow although a porky 
is very sluggish and slow, there is one 
part of him that is as quick as a steel 
trap, and that is his tail. 'Something hit 
the fisher a sudden whack on his flank. 
He gave a cry of pain and fury and jumped 



158 Forest Neighbors 

back with half a dozen spears sticking in 
his flesh. Then he lost his head entirely 
and before he knew it his face also had 
come within reach of that terrible tail and 
its quick vicious jerks. That ended the 
battle, and he fled away across the snow, 
almost mad with the agony in his nose, 
his eyes, his forehead, and his left flank. 

As for the Porky, he made for the 
nearest tree as fast as he could go. He 
was in a real hurry and felt that he must 
hustle for dear life. He. picked up his 
feet and put them down again as fast as 
ever he could. Yet no matter how hard 
he worked his legs were so short and his 
body was so fat that he couldn't begin to 
travel as fast as he wanted to. 

Another day the lynx tried it, and fared 
even worse than the fisher. It was not 
the Canada lynx, but the bay lynx. The 
fisher had had some sense and he probably 
would have succeeded if he had been a 
little more careful, but the lynx was foolish. 



Pointers from a Porcupine Quill 159 

He didn't know the very first thing about 
how to hunt porcupines, and he ought 
never to have tried it at all, but he was 
really starving. 

Here was something alive, something 
that had warm red blood in its veins and 
a good thick layer of flesh over its bones, 
and that was too slow to get away from 
him. He sailed right in, tooth and claws, 
without thinking of the consequences. The 
next minute he forgot all about the Porcu- 
pine and his own hunger, and everything 
else except the terrible pain in his face 
and fore-paws. He made the woods fairly 
ring with his howls, and he jumped up 
and down on the snow-crust, rubbing his 
head with his paws, and driving the little 
barbed spears deeper and deeper into the 
flesh. And then, all of a sudden, he ceased 
his leaping and bounding and howling, and 
dropped on the snow in a limp, lifeless 
heap, dead as last summer's lily-pads. 
One of the quills had driven straight 



160 Forest Neighbors 

through his left eye and into his brain. 
Was it any wonder that in time the Porcu- 
pine came to think that nothing could 
hurt him? 

Even a northern Michigan winter has 
its ending. At last there came an evening 
when all the porcupines in the w^oods 
around the Glimmerglass w r ere calling to 
each other, from one tree to another. 
There was something in the air that stirred 
them to a vague restlessness, and our own 
particular Porky sat up in the top of a 
tall hemlock tree and sang. Not like 
Jenny Lind, nor like a nightingale, but 
his harsh voice went squealing up and 
down the scale in a way that was all his 
own. There was no time or rhythm or 
melody. It was the wildest, strangest 
music that ever smote the silent woods. 
I don't believe he knew what he meant 
or why he did it, but the Indians say that 
the porcupines sing when there is a thaw 
coming. 




The Indians say that the porcupines sing when there is a 
thaw coming. 



162 Forest Neighbors 

The thaw arrived next day, and it proved 
to be the beginning of spring. The sum- 
mer followed as fast as it conld. Again 
the lily-pads were green along the edge 
of the Glimmerglass, and again the Porcu- 
pine wandered often to the beach to feed 
upon them, giving up for a time his winter 
diet of bark and twigs. Why should one 
live on rye-bread and potatoes when one 
can just as easily have ice-cream and cake? 

It was a hot August afternoon when I 
was paddling along the edge of the Glim- 
merglass with a friend, each of us in a 
small dug-out canoe, that we found the 
Porky asleep in the sunshine. He was 
lying on the nearly horizontal trunk of a 
tree whose roots had been undermined by 
the waves till it leaned far out over the 
lake, hardly a foot above the water. 

My friend, by the way, was the foreman 
of a lumbercamp. He had served in the 
British army, hunted whales off the coast 
of Greenland, and run a street car in Chi- 



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164 Forest Neighbors 

cago. Now he was snaking logs out of 
the Michigan woods. He was a big man, ■ 
tall and well set up, and it would have 
taken a pretty good prize-fighter to whip 
him, but he learned that day that a porcu- 
pine at close quarters is worse than a 
trained pugilist. 

" Look at that porky, " he called to me. 
" I'm going to ram the canoe into the 
tree and knock him off into the water. 
Just you watch, and you'll see some fun." 

I was somewhat uncertain whether the 
joke would be on the porcupine or on the 
man. It was pretty sure to be worth 
seeing, one way or the other, so I laid 
my paddle down and watched. Bang! went 
the nose of the dug-out against the tree, 
and the Porcupine dropped, but not into 
the water. He landed in the bow of the 
canoe, and the horrified look on my friend's 
face was a delight to see. The Porky was 
wide awake by this time for I could hear 



Pointers from a Porcupine Quill 165 

his teeth clacking as he advanced to the 
attack. 

" Great Scott! He's coming right at 
me! " cried the foreman. 

The Porcupine was certainly game. I 
saw the paddle rise in the air and come 
down with a tremendous whack, but the 
Porcupine hardly noticed it. His coat of 
quills and hair was so thick that a blow 
on the back did not trouble him much. 
If my friend could have hit him across 
the nose it would have ended the matter 
then and there, but the canoe was too 
narrow and its sides were too high for 
a crosswise stroke. The foreman tried 
thrusting, but that was no better. When 
a good-sized porcupine has really made 
up his mind to go somewhere he may be 
slow but it takes more than a punch with 
the end of a stick to stop him. This Porky 
had fully determined to go aft and get 
acquainted with the foreman. 

My friend couldn't even kick, for he 




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Pointers from a Porcupine Quill 167 

was kneeling on the bottom of the dug- 
out, with his feet behind him. If he stood 
up he would probably tip over. 

" Say, what am I going to do? " cried 
the foreman. 

I didn't give him any advice, since my 
sympathies were largely with the Porcu- 
pine. Besides, I hadn't any advice to give. 
Just then the canoe drifted around so that 
I could look into it and see the Porcupine 
bearing down on my helpless friend. His 
ruffle of quills was erect, there was fire 
in his little black eyes, and he w^as thirsting 
for vengeance. My friend made one or 
two final jabs at him and then gave it up. 

" It's no use! " he called; " I'll have to 
tip over! [I and the next second the canoe 
w x as upside down and they were both in 
the water. The Porcupine floated high — 
I suppose his hollow quills helped to keep 
him up — and he proved a much better 
swimmer than I expected. He quickly 
made his way to the beach and dis- 



168 Forest Neighbors 

appeared, still chattering disrespectfully. 
My friend waded ashore, righted his canoe, 
and we went on. I don't think I'll tell 
you what he said about that Porky. He 




got over it after a while, and in the end 
he probably enjoyed his joke more than 
if it had turned out as he had intended. 
The summer followed the winter into 
the past; the winter again followed the 
summer, and the next spring the Porcu- 



Pointers from a Porcupine Quill 169 

pine was seized with a wandering fit. He 
left the Glimmerglass and for days he 
meandered along whenever he felt like it. 
At last when he had actually gone two 
or three miles, he came to a little clearing 
where a moss-back lived. A railway 
crossed one edge of it, between the hill 
and the swamp. Five miles away was a 
junction where locomotives were con- 
stantly moving about, backing, hauling, 
and making up their trains. 

As the moss-back lay awake in the long 
quiet winter nights he often heard the 
trains puffing and snorting, now with slow, 
heavy coughs, and now quick and sharp. 
One night when he was half asleep he 
heard something that said, ' ' chew - chew - 
chew - chew - chew - chew, ' ' like an engine 
that has its train moving and is just begin- 
ning to speed up. At first he paid no 
attention to it. But the noise suddenly 
stopped short, and after a pause of a few 
seconds it began again at exactly the same 



170 Forest Neighbors 

speed; stopped again, and began again. 
And so it went on, chewing and pausing, 
chewing and pausing, with always just so 
many chews to the second, and just so 
many seconds to each rest. But no loco- 
motive ever puffed like that. 

The moss-back was wide awake now, 
and he muttered something about " another 
of those pesky porkies." He had killed 
the last one that came around the house, 
and had wanted his w^ife to cook it for 
dinner and see how it tasted. But she 
wouldn't. She said she had enough to do 
to cook pork and potatoes. 

He turned over and tried to go to sleep 
again, but without success. That steady 
" chew^-chew-chew " was enough to keep 
a woodchuck awake, and at last he got 
up and went to the door. The moonlight 
on the snow was almost as bright as day. 
There was the Porcupine, leaning against 
the side of the barn. He w T as busily rasp- 
ing the wood from around the head of a 



Pointers from a Porcupine Quill 171 

rusty nail. The moss-back threw a stick 
of stove-wood at him, and he lumbered 
clumsily away across the snow. But 
twenty minutes later he was back again. 
This time he marched straight into the 
open shed at the back of the house, and 
began gnawing at a wooden wash-tub, 
whose flavor of soap he thought very deli- 
cious. Again the moss-back appeared at 
the doorway, shivering a little in his 
bathrobe. 

The Porcupine was at the foot of the 
steps. He had stopped chewing when the 
door opened, and now he lifted his fore- 
paws and sat half-erect. His yellow teeth 
showed between his parted lips, and his 
little eyes stared at the lamp which the 
moss-back carried. The quills slanted back 
from all around his diminutive face, and 
even from between his eyes. They were 
short on his head but growing longer 
toward his shoulders and back. Long 
whitish bristles were mingled with them. 



172 Forest Neighbors 

The moss-back could not help thinking of 
a little old, old man, with hair that was 
grizzly gray, and a face that was half- 
stupid and half-sad and wistful. Porky 
was barely two years of age, but a porcu- 
pine seems to be born old. Some of the 
Indians say that he is ashamed of his 
homely looks, and that is the reason why 
by day he walks so slowly, with hanging 
head and downcast eyes; but at night, they 
say, when the friendly darkness hides his 
ugliness, he lifts his head and runs like 
a dog. 

In spite of the hour and the cheering 
influence of the wash-tub, our Porky 
seemed even more low-spirited than usual. 
Perhaps the lamplight had suddenly 
reminded him of how he looked. At any 
rate he seemed so lonesome and forlorn 
that the moss-back felt a little thrill of 
pity for him. He decided not to kill him 
after all but to drive him away again. 
He started down the steps with his lamp 



Pointers from a Porcupine Quill 173 

in one hand and a stick of wood in the 
other, and then — he never knew how it 
happened, but some way he stumbled and 
fell. 

Never in all his life, not even when his 
wildest nightmare came and sat on him in 
the wee sma' hours, had the moss-back 
come so near screaming out in terror as 
he did at that minute. He thought he was 
going to land on the Porcupine. Fortu- 
nately for both of them, but especially for 
the man, he missed by half an inch, and 
the Porky scuttled away as fast as his 
legs could carry him. 

In spite of this experience the Porcu- 
pine hung around the edges of the clearing 
for several months, and enjoyed many a 
meal such as the woods-people seldom 
know. One night he found an empty pork- 
barrel out behind the barn. Its staves 
were fairly saturated with salt, and hour 
after hour he scraped away upon it, per- 
fectly content. 



174 Forest Neighbors 

Another time what should he find but 
a piece of bacon rind among some scraps 
that the moss-back's wife had thrown 
away. It was just as good as that which 
the land-lookers had left in the snow, and 
much bigger. Then, too, he found the 
place in the woods where they were making 
maple syrup, and at night he gnawed deep 
notches in the edges of the sap buckets 
and barrels, and helped himself to the 
syrup in the big boiling-pan. It was better 
than candy. 

Life was not all feasting, however. 
There was a dog w r ho attacked him several 
times, but who finally learned to keep 
away and mind his own business. Once 
the Porcupine had ventured a little too 
close to the house and was making a great 
racket with his teeth. The moss-back came 
to the door and fired a shot-gun at him. 
It cut off several of his quills and scared 
him badly, but he was not hurt. And still 
another time a curious calf came and 



Pointers from a Porcupine Quill 175 

smelled him. Next morning the moss-back 
and his boys threw the calf down on the 
ground and tied his feet to a stump, and 
the boys sat on him while the moss-back 
pulled the quills from his nose with a pair 
of pincers. 

Then came the greatest adventure of all. 
Down beside the railway was a small plat- 
form on which supplies for the lumber- 
camps were sometimes unloaded from the 
trains. Brine and molasses and other deli- 
cious things had leaked out of the barrels 
and boxes. The Porcupine discovered that 
the boards of the platform were very 
nicely seasoned and flavored. But he 
visited them once too often. 

One summer evening, as he was gnaw- 
ing away at the site of an ancient puddle 
of molasses, the accommodation train 
rolled in and came to a halt. He tried to 
hide behind a stump, but the trainmen 
soon caught sight of him. Before he knew 
it they had guided him with a stick until 



176 Forest Neighbors 

he went into an empty box, and then they 
hoisted him into a baggage car. For forty 
miles he bumped along over the railroad 
until he arrived at the town of Sault Ste. 
Marie, and there he was turned loose 
among the passengers on the station 
platform. 

To say that his arrival created a sensa- 
tion would be putting it very mildly. 
When the first excitement had subsided all 
the ladies wanted quills for souvenirs. All 
the men set to w r ork to procure them, 
and prove their strength and courage upon 
this poor little twenty pound beast just 
out of the w^oods. 

Most of them succeeded in getting some 
quills but not in the way they expected — 
especially the one who tried to lift the 
Porcupine by the tail. He soon learned 
that that is the very liveliest part of the 
animal's anatomy. They finally discovered 
that the best way to get quills from a live 
porcupine is to hit him with a piece of 



Pointers from a Porcupine Quill 177 

board. The sharp points stick in the wood, 
the other ends come loose, and there you 
have them. Our friend lost most of his 
armor that day, and it was a good thing 
for him that quills, like clipped hair, will 
grow again. 

At last one of the brakemen carried him 
home, and he spent the next few months 
in the enjoyment of city life. He had 
plenty to eat, and he learned that apples 
are very good indeed. He sat up on his 
haunches and held them in his forepaws 
while he ate them, as a squirrel eats nuts, 
but he was very awkward about it at first. 

He also learned that men are not always 
enemies, for his owner and his owner's chil- 
dren were very good to him and soon won 
his confidence. But, after all, the city was 
not home and the woods were. He used 
some of his spare time to gnaw a hole 
through the wall in a dark corner of the 
shed where he was confined, and one night 
he scrambled out and hid himself in an 



178 Forest Neighbors 

empty barn. A day or two later he was 
in the forest again. 

The remaining years of his life were 
spent on the banks of St. Mary's River, 
and for the most part they were years of 
quiet and contentment. He was far from 
his early home, but the bark of a birch 
or a maple tree is much the same on St. 
Mary's as by the Glimmerglass. He grew 
bigger and fatter as time went on, and 
some weeks before he died he must have 
weighed thirty or forty pounds. 

Once in a while there was a little dash 
of excitement to keep life from becoming 
too monotonous — if too much monotony 
is possible for a porcupine. One night he 
scrambled up the steps of a little summer 
cottage close to the edge of the river. 
Finding the door unlatched, he pushed it 
open and walked in. It proved to be a 
cottage full of girls. They stood around 
on chairs and w x ash-stands, bombarded him 
with curling-irons, poked him with bed- 



Pointers from a Porcupine Quill 179 

slats, and shrieked with laughter till the 
farmers over on the Canadian shore turned 
in their beds and wondered what could 
be happening on Uncle Sam's side of the 
river. 

The worst of it was that in his travels 
around the room the Porcupine had come 
up behind the door and pushed it shut. 
It was some time before even the red- 
haired girl could muster up sufficient cour- 
age to climb down from her perch and 
open it again. But after he had shut it 
again, and she, amid shouts of encourage- 
ment, had re-opened it, he finally came at 
it the right way and escaped to the quiet 
of the forest. 

At another time an Indian robbed him 
of the longest and best of his quills, some 
of them nearly five inches in length. The 
thief carried them off to be used in orna- 
menting birchbark baskets. And on still 
another occasion he narrowly escaped 
death at the hands of an angry canoe-man, 



180 Forest Neighbors 

in the side of whose canoe he had gnawed 
a great hole. 

The end came at last, and it w r as the 
saddest, strangest fate that can ever come 
to a wild creature of the w^oods. He — who 
had never known hunger in all his life, 
who was almost the only animal in the 
forest that had never looked famine in 
the eye, whose table was spread with good 
things from January to December, and 
whose storehouse was full from Lake 
Huron to the Pictured Rocks — he, of all 
others, was condemned to die of starvation 
in the midst of plenty. The Ancient 
Mariner, with w^ater all around him and 
not a drop to drink, w^as no worse off than 
our Porcupine; and the Mariner finally 
escaped, but the Porky didn't. 

One of the summer tourists who wan- 
dered up into the north woods that year 
carried with him a little rifle. It was 
more of a toy than a weapon, and a thing 
that a sportsman would not have looked 



Pointers from a Porcupine Quill 181 

at twice. And one afternoon, by. ill luck, 
lie caught sight of the Porcupine high up 
in the top of a tall tree. It was his first 
chance at a genuine wild beast, and he 
fired away all his cartridges as fast he 
could load them into his gun. He thought 
that every shot missed, and he was very 
much ashamed of his shooting. But he 
was mistaken. 

The very last bullet broke one of the 
Porcupine's lower front teeth, and hurt 
him terribly. It jarred him to the very 
end of his tail, and his head felt as if it 
were being smashed to bits. For a minute 
or two the strength all went out of him, 
and if he had not been lying in a safe, 
comfortable crotch he would have fallen 
to the ground. 

The pain and shock passed away after 
a while, but when supper-time came — and 
it was almost always supper- time with the 
Porcupine — his left lower incisor was 
missing. The right one was uninjured, 



182 Forest Neighbors 

however, and for a while he got on pretty 
well. He merely had to spend a little more 
time than usual over his meals. 

That, however, was only the beginning 
of the trouble. The stump of the broken 
tooth was still there and still growing. 
It was soon as long as ever. In the 
meantime the upper tooth on that side 
had grown out beyond its normal length, 
and now the two did not meet properly. 
Instead of coming together edge to edge 
as they should have done and wearing 
each other down, each one now pushed 
the other farther aside. Still they kept 
on growing, growing, growing. 

Worst of all, in a short time these two 
teeth had begun to crowd his jaws apart 
so that he could hardly use his right hand 
teeth, and they, too, were soon out of shape. 
The evil days had come and the sound of 
the grinding was low. Little by little his 
mouth was forced open wider and wider, 
and the food that passed between his lips 



Pointers from a Porcupine Quill 183 

grew less and less. His teeth, that had 
all his life been his best tools and his most 
faithful servants, had turned against him 
in his old age and were killing him by 
inches. Let us not linger over those days. 

He was spared the very last and worst 
pangs — for that, at least, we may be 
thankful. On the very last day of his life 
he sat under a beech-tree, weak and weary 
and faint. He could not remember when 
he had eaten. His coat of hair and quills 
was as thick and bushy as ever. Out- 
wardly he had hardly changed at all, but 
under his skin there was little left but 
bones. And as he sat there and wished 
that he was dead there came a man with 
a revolver in his pocket, a man who liked 
to kill things. 

" A porky! " he said. " Guess I'll kill 
him, just for fun.' 9 

The Porcupine saw him coming and 
knew the danger. For a moment the old 
love of life came back as strong as ever, 



184 Forest Neighbors 

and lie gathered his feeble strength for 

one last effort and started up the tree. 

He was perhaps six 
feet up the trunk 
when the first re- 
port came. 

"Bang! Bang ! 
Bang! Bang! " 
Four shots, as fast 
as the self-cocking 
revolver could pour 
the lead into his 
body. The Porky 
stopped climbing. 
For an instant he 
hung motionless on 
the side of the tree, 
and then his fore- 
paws let go, and he 
swayed backward 

and fell to the ground. And that was the 

end of the Porcupine, 





A Kitten of the Woods 

'HE Canada Lynx and his wife 
came down the runway that 
jg^^||| follows the high bank along the 
northern shore of the Glimmerglass, their 
keen, silvery eyes watching the w^oods for 
something to eat. It was winter time and 
their big feet were padding softly in the 
snow. 

The Canada Lynx was old and he had 
grown very tall and gaunt. He was nearly 
two feet high and about three and a half 
feet in length, and he looked like a very 
large, fierce cat. He had an ugly face, a 
very wicked-looking set of teeth, and claws 
that were two inches long and so heavy 
and sharp that sometimes when he climbed 
a tree you could hear them crunch into 
the bark. In his powerful legs, and big, 

185 



186 Forest Neighbors 

clumsy-looking paws, were magnificent 
muscles, pulling and hauling under his 
cloak. 

His wife was very much like him in 
general appearance, and was nearly as 
large as he. Both of them w r ore long 
thick fur, of a steel-gray color, with paler 
shades underneath, and darker trimmings 
along their back-bones and up and down 
their legs. Their paws were big and broad 
and furry, their tails were stubby and 
short, and they wore heavy grizzled whis- 
kers on the sides of their jaws, and 
mustachios under their noses. From the 
tips of their ears rose tassels of stiff dark 
hairs that had an uncommonly jaunty 
effect. Altogether, they looked, perhaps, 
much more warlike and terrible than they 
really were. 

That winter was a hard one. The cold 
was intense, the snow was very deep, and 
the storms came often. Spruce hens and 
partridges were scarce, and even rabbits 



A Kitten of the Woods 187 

were hard to find. Sometimes, indeed, it 
seemed to the lynxes as if they were the 
only two animals left in the woods; except, 
of course, the deer. There were always 
plenty of them down in the cedar swamp, 
and their tracks were as plain as a lumber- 
man's logging road. But somehow or other 
the lynxes never liked to tackle a deer. 
But today they were very hungry, and 
now when the wind suddenly brought them 
a familiar scent they bounded quietly up 
into a tree beside the runway, as lightly 
and noiselessly as a cat springs onto a 
chair. 

It w^as not usual for a deer to be in 
that part of the woods in winter, but 
perhaps this one was changing his location 
or was going on an errand. At any rate, 
the two lynxes did not discuss it, but sat 
motionless on their branches as a big buck 
came into view. He walked leisurely 
toward them, all unconscious of their pres- 
ence above him. Their claws twitched and 



188 Forest Neighbors 

their eyes blazed, and they fairly trembled 
with eagerness and excitement as the big 
gray creature passed beneath them. But 
neither the Canada Lynx nor his wife 
jumped at the deer. They were splendidly 
armed and it seemed as if they must have 
surely succeeded if they had only risked 
a tussle; but the deer looked too big, and 
his hoofs were sharp and his horns pointed. 
After he w r as gone from sight, they slid 
down to the ground, grumbling, growling, 
and still hungry. 

As dusk fell, the Canada Lynx and his 
wife came upon a pair of luckless rabbits 
making a supper of bark. A rabbit might 
not taste as good as venison, but one needs 
not the least bit of courage to attack it, 
and in a moment more the lynxes w T ere 
happy over a rabbit apiece. 

But even a good square meal doesn't last 
very long, and it was only a night or two 
after that the lynx followed up Aleck, who 
was going home with a haunch of fresh 



A Kitten of the Woods 189 

venison over his shoulder. The Canada 
Lynx didn't want Aleck. In fact, every 
instinct within him told him to keep away 
from man, but the smell of the newly-cut, 
fresh meat was almost more than he could 
stand. 

He skulked along behind, getting always 
a little closer and a little closer. The 
odor of the meat became stronger and 
finally he could not resist any longer, and 
he gathered himself together, intending to 
spring at Aleck from behind. Just then 
another man appeared ahead, and the 
Lynx, suddenly frightened, stopped dead, 
w^atched a moment, and then turned and 
fled. It was lucky for him that he did, for 
Aleck had a pistol in his pocket. 

Aside from any question of bravery, I 
am afraid that the Lynx was not really 
as wise and clever as he looked. I have 
an idea that when Nature manufactured 
him she thought he did not need as much 
wisdom or as many wits as some other 



190 Forest Neighbors 

people of the woods, because he was larger 
and stronger and better armed than most 
of them. Except perhaps the bear, who 
was too easy-going to disturb him, there 
was not one of the wild animals that could 
thrash him. They all knew it and let him 
alone, 

You can often manage without brains if 
you only have the necessary teeth and 
muscles and claws; and the old lynx had 
them without any doubt. But I am afraid 
that Nature, when giving a wild animal the 
physical strength to protect itself, now 
and then forgets that men go at things in 
a different way. Brains are a good thing 
to have after all. Even a lynx is pretty 
sure to need them sooner or later. His 
fellow-citizens of the woods may treat 
him with great respect, but the trapper 
will get him if he doesn't watch out. 

One day our lynx found some more 
snow-shoe tracks, just like those that 
Aleck had made. Instead of running away, 



A Kitten of the Woods 191 

as he ought to have done, and as most of 
the animals would have had sense enough 
to do, he followed them up to see where 
they led. He wasn't particularly hungry 
that day and there was no excuse for 
wiiat he did. It was not that he was very 
brave, because he had no idea of attacking 
any one. It w^as simply a case of foolish 
curiosity. 

He followed the trail a long way, not 
walking directly in it, but keeping just a 
little to one side. He plunged about 
heavily as he went, for a foot and a half 
of light, fluffy snow had fallen the day 
before and the walking was very bad. 

Pretty soon he caught sight of a little 
piece of scarlet cloth fastened to a stick 
that stood upright in a drift. It ought 
to have been another warning to him, but 
it only made his curiosity greater, as the 
trapper knew it would. He sat down in 
the snow and considered. The thing didn't 
really look as if it were good to eat, and 



192 Forest Neighbors 

yet it might be. The only way to find 
out would be to go up and taste it. Eat- 
able or not, such a bright bit of color was 
certainly very attractive to the eye. The 
Lynx hadn't seen anything so red since 
last summer's wild flowers had faded. At 
last he got up and walked slowly toward 
it, and the first thing he knew a steel trap 
had him by the right foreleg. 

For a few minutes he was the very 
maddest cat in all the Great Tahquamenon 
Swamp, and he yelled and howled and 
caterwauled at the top of his voice, and 
jumped and tore around as if he was crazy. 
But, of course, that sort of thing did him 
no good, and after a while he quieted down 
and took things a little more calmly. 

The trap was fastened by a short chain 
to a heavy billet of wood. He found that 
by pulling with all his might he could 
drag it at a snail's pace through the snow. 
So off he w r ent on three legs, hauling the 
trap and the billet by the fourth, with the 



A Kitten of the Woods 193 

blood oozing out around the steel jaws 
and leaving a line of crimson stains behind 
him. The strain on his foot hurt him 
cruelly, but a great fear was in his heart, 
and he knew that he must go away or die. 
So he pushed on, hour after hour, stopping 
now and then to rest in a thicket of cedar 
or hemlock, but soon gathering strength 
for another effort. How he growled and 
snarled with rage and pain! How his 
great eyes flamed as he looked ahead to 
see what was before him, or back along 
the trail to know if the trapper was 
coming ! 

It was a terrible journey that he made 
that night, and the hours dragged by, 
slow as his pace and heavy as his clog. 
He was heading for the hollow tree by 
the Glimmerglass that he and his wife 
called home. But he had not made more 
than half the distance, and his strength 
was nearly gone. Half-way between mid- 
night and dawn he reached the edge of 



194 Forest Neighbors 

a steep and narrow gully that lay straight 
across his path. The moon had risen some 
time before and the white slopes of the 
gully gleamed and shone in the frosty 
light, and looked all the whiter by contrast 
with the few dark bushes and evergreen 
trees that were scattered up and down 
the little valley. 

The Lynx stood on the brink, hesitating. 
It would be hard, hard w r ork to climb the 
farther side, dragging that heavy billet, 
but at least it ought to be easy going 
down. He scrambled over the edge, haul- 
ing the clog after him till it began to roll 
of its own accord. The chain slackened, 
and he leaped forward. It was good to 
be able to jump again. But he jumped 
too far, or tried to, and the chain tightened 
with a jerk that brought him down head 
first in the snow. Before he could get 
on his feet again the clog shot past him, 
and the chain jerked again and sent him 
heels over head. And then cat, trap, and 



A Kitten of the Woods 195 

clog all went rolling over and over down 
the slope, and landed in a heap at the 
bottom. 

All the breath and the spirit were 
knocked out of him, and for a long time 
he could do nothing but lie still in the 
snow, trembling with weakness and pain, 
and moaning miserably. It must have 
been half an hour before he could pull 
himself together again. Then, just as he 
was about to begin to climb up the far 
side of the gully, he suddenly discovered 
that he was no longer alone. 

Off to the left, among some thick bushes, 
he saw the lurking form of a timber-wolf. 
He looked to the right, and there was 
another. Behind him was a third, and he 
thought he saw several others, still farther 
away, slinking from bush to bush, and 
gradually drawing nearer. Ordinarily they 
would hardly have dreamed of tackling 
him, and if they had mustered up enough 
courage he would simply have climbed a 



196 Forest Neighbors 

tree and laughed at them. But now it 
was different. 

The Lynx cowered down on the snow 
and seemed to shrink to half his size. 
Then, as all the horror and the hopeless- 
ness of it came over him, he lifted up his 
voice in such a cry of fear, as even the 
Great Tahquamenon Swamp had very sel- 
dom heard. I suppose that he had killed 
and eaten hundreds of smaller animals 
himself, but I doubt whether any of them 
ever suffered as he did. Most of them 
were killed and eaten almost before they 
knew^ what was coming. He had to lie 
still and see his enemies closing in upon 
him, knowing that he could not fight and 
he could not run away. But when the 
last moment came he must have braced 
up and given a good account of himself. 
At least that was w T hat the trapper decided 
when he came a few hours later to look 
for his trap. The Lynx was gone — not 
even a broken bone of him was left — but 



A Kitten of the Woods 197 

there in the trodden and bloodstained snow 
was the record of an awful struggle. There 
must have been something heroic about 
him after all. 

For the rest of the winter his widow 
had to hunt alone. This was not hard, 
for they had often hunted separately — 
more often perhaps than they had gone 
together. But now there was never any- 
one to curl up beside her in the hollow 
tree and help her keep warm. There was 
no one to share his kill with her when 
she failed in getting a meal. The respon- 
sibility was now all on her own shoulders 
and she hunted night and day. 

On the whole she was very successful. 
I think she was rather more skilful in 
the chase than her mate had been, and 
this seems to be quite usual in cat families. 
Perhaps she walked more lightly and could 
creep up more cautiously than her some- 
what clumsy husband. However that may 
have been, she proved herself a mighty 



198 Forest Neighbors 

huntress. Her eye was keen and her foot 
was sure, and she made terrible havoc 
among the rabbits and partridges. 

And yet there were times when she 
was hungry and tired and disheartened. 
Once, on a clear, cold winter night when 
all the great white world seemed frozen 
to death, she serenaded a land-looker who 
had made his bed in a deserted lumber- 
camp. She had eaten almost nothing for 
several days, and she knew that her 
strength was leaving her. That very 
evening she had fallen short in a flying 
leap at a rabbit. She had seen him dive 
head-first into his burrow, safe by the 
fraction of an inch. She had screeched 
with rage and disappointment, and as the 
hours went by and she found no other 
game, she grew so blue and discouraged 
that she really couldn't contain herself 
any longer. Perhaps it did her good to 
have a cry. 

For two hours the land-looker lav in 



A Kitten of the Woods 199 

his bunk and listened to a wailing that 
made his heart fairly sink within him. 
Now it was a piercing scream, now it was 
a sob, and now it died away in a low 
moan, only to rise again, wilder and more 
agonized than ever. He knew^ without a 
doubt, that it was only some kind of cat 
— knew it just as well as he knew that 
his compass needle pointed north. Yet 
there had been one time in his land-looking 
experience that he had been ready to 
swear that the needle was pointing south- 
southeast. And tonight, in spite of his 
certain knowledge that the voice he heard 
was that of a lynx or a wild-cat or a 
cougar, he couldn't help being almost sure 
that it came from a woman in distress. 
There was in it such human anguish and 
despair. Twice he got half-way out of 
bed to go to her assistance, and then lay 
down again and called himself a fool. 

At last he could stand it no longer. He 
took a piece of burning wood from the 



200 Forest Neighbors 

broken stove that stood in the center of 
the room and went to the door and looked 
out. The great round moon had checkered 
the snow-crust with inky shadows and 
patches of dazzling white. The cold air 
struck him like needles, and he said to 
himself that it was no wonder that either 
a cat or a woman should cry if she had 
to stay out in the snow on such a night. 
The moaning and wailing ceased as he 
opened the door. Two round spots of flame 
shone out of a black shadow and stared 
at him unwinkingly. The pupils of the 
lynx's eyes were wide open and they 
glowed a golden yellow. It was no woman. 
No human eyes could ever shine like that. 
The land-looker threw the burning stick 
with all his might. An ugly snarl came 
from the shadow, and he saw a big gray 
animal go tearing away across the smooth, 
hard crust in a curious kind of gallop. 
The lynx took three or four yards at a 
bound, came down on all four feet at 



A Kitten of the Woods 201 

once, and sprang forward again as if made 
of rubber. The land-looker shut the door 
and went back to bed. 

That was the end of the concert. Half 
an hour later as she was loping quietly 
along in the moonlight the lynx thought 
she heard a faint sound from beneath her 
feet. She stood still to listen and the 
next minute she was sure. 

During the last heavy snowstorm three 
partridges had dived into a drift for 
shelter from the wind and the cold. A 
thick hard crust had formed over their 
heads and they were struggling unsuccess- 
fully to get out. She hauled them out 
in short order and buried them again after 
a fashion of her own. Then she went 
home to her hollow tree and slept the 
sleep of those who have clone what Xature 
tells them to, and whose consciences are 
clear and whose stomachs are full. 

That was her nearest approach to starva- 



202 Forest Neighbors 

tion. She never was quite so hungry again 
as when she serenaded the land-looker. 

In the early spring she had a great 
piece of good luck. Not very far from 
her hollow tree she met a buck that had 
been mortally wounded by a hunter. He 
had had strength to run away from his 
pursuer, but there was very little fight 
left in him. The lynx attacked him at 
once, and it did not take her long to finish 
him. Probably it was a good thing for 
him, for he had suffered greatly in the 
last few days. ^Fortunately no wolves or 
other large animals found the buck and 
he gave her meat for quite a while. 

It was about this time that two kittens 
arrived in the old hollow tree. It seemed 
to her that they were the very finest she 
had ever had, although they looked just 
like two little balls of reddish brown fur 
that turned over once in a while and 
mewed for their dinner. 



A Kitten of the Woods 203 

Some of the scientific men say that a 
newborn baby has no mind, but only a 
blank something that can receive impres- 
sions, and that may, in certain cases, have 
tendencies. The baby lynxes, I believe, 
had tendencies, and imagine if you can 
what their first impressions were like. 

Remember that, like other kittens, they 
were blind, and if their ears heard sounds 
they certainly did not know what made 
them. Sometimes they were cold and 
hungry and lonesome, and that was an 
impression of the wrong sort. They did 
not know what the trouble w^as, but surely 
something was the matter, and they cried 
about it, like other babies. Then would 
come a great, warm comforting presence, 
and all would be right again; and that 
was a very pleasant impression, indeed. 
Probably they did not know that their 
empty stomachs had been filled, or that 
their shrinking, shivering little bodies 
were snuggled down in somebody's thick 



204 Forest Neighbors 

fur coat, or that somebody's warm red 
tongue was licking and caressing them. 
Nor did they know how many rabbits and 
partridges that big, strong, comforting 
somebody had killed. But they knew that 
all was well with them, and that every- 
thing was just as it should be — and they 
took another nap. 

By and by they were no longer content 
with lying still and began to look about 
for impressions. They forced their weak 
little legs to lift their squat little bodies 
and carry them around the inside of the 
tree. They bumped their heads against 
the walls and stumbled and fell down over 
the rough places in the floor. They got a 
good many impressions during these excur- 
sions, and some of them were mental and 
some were physical. 

Sometimes they explored their mother 
and went scrambling and sprawling all 
over her. And yet they had never seen 
her, for their eyes were still closed. They 



A Kitten of the Woods 205 

knew her only as a big, kind, loving, furry 
thing, that fed them and warmed them, 
and licked them, and made them feel good. 
But the hour came at last when for the 
first time they saw the light of day shining 
in through the hole in the side of their 
tree. And while they were looking at it 
— and probably blinking at it — a footstep 
sounded outside. 

The hole was suddenly darkened, and 
a round, hairy face looked in — a face 
with big, unwinking eyes, pointed, tufted 
ears, and a thick whisker brushed back 
from under its chin. Do you suppose they 
knew it was their mother? I don't believe 
they did. But when she jumped in beside 
them, then they knew her, and the impres- 
sion they gained that day was the most 
wonderful of all. 

In looks, these kittens of the woods 
were not so very different from those of 
the back yard, except that they were big- 
ger and a little clumsier. Their paws were 



206 Forest Neighbors 

very large and their tails were very short 
and stubby. They grew stronger as the 
days went on. Their legs did not wobble 



/ 





quite so much w T hen they went exploring 
around the inside of the tree. They 
learned to use their ears as well as their 



A Kitten of the Woods 207 

eyes, and they knew what their mother's 
step meant at a distance. They liked to 
hear her purr. 

There were other sounds which they 
did not understand so well and to most 
of which they gave little notice. They 
did not know the scream of the rabbit 
when the gray cat leaped on him from 
behind a bush, the scolding of the red 
squirrel, the bark of the fox, or the rasping 
of the porcupine's teeth. The pleasant 
rustling and whispering of the trees had 
no meaning for them. All these noises 
of the woods and many others besides 
came to them from a mysterious region 
outside the walls of their tree. Of that 
region they knew nothing, except that 
their mother often went there. But she 
was beginning to think that they were 
big enough and old enough to learn some- 
thing more about it, and so one day she 
led them out of the hole. 

They saw the sunshine, and the blue of 



208 Forest Neighbors 

the sky, and the green of the trees, and 
the whiteness of the sailing clouds, and 
the beauty of the Glimmerglass. But I 
don't think they appreciated the wonder 
and glory of it all or paid much attention 
to it. They were too much interested in 
making their legs work properly, for their 
knees were still rather w r eak, and w r ere 
apt to give out all of a sudden and let a 
fellow sit down when he didn't want to. 
And the dry leaves and little sticks kept 
sliding around under their feet so that 
they never knew what was going to happen 
next. It was very different from the 
hollow tree. They were glad when at 
last their mother picked them up one at 
a time by the back of the neck, carried 
them home, gave them their supper, and 
told them to lie still and take a nap w^hile 
she went after another rabbit. 

But they had really done very well, for 
their first day out. One of them in par- 
ticular was very smart and lively. The 



A Kitten of the Woods 209 

mother had taken much pleasure in watch- 
ing the independent way in which he went 
staggering about, looking for impressions. 
And the other was not far behind. She 
was very satisfied, for her babies were 
all that she could ask. 

She began bringing something home for 
them to play with — a woodmouse, or a 
squirrel, or a partridge, or even a larger 
animal. They would shake it and worry it, 
spitting and growling and snarling over 
it in the most cat-like fashion. 

You should have seen them the first 
time they saw their mother catch a rabbit. 
They did not try to help her, for she had 
told them not to, but they watched her 
as if it were a matter of life and death — 
as indeed it was, but not to them. The 
rabbit was nibbling some tender young 
sprouts. The old lynx crept up behind 
him, very quietly and stealthily. The kit- 
tens ' eyes stuck out farther and farther 
as they saw her gradually work up within 



210 Forest Neighbors 

leaping distance. They nearly jumped out 
of their skins with excitement when at 
last she gave a bound and landed with 
both forepaws on the middle of his back. 
And when the rabbit screamed out with 
fright and pain, they could not hold on 
to themselves any longer, but rushed in 
and helped finish him. They seemed to 
understand the game as perfectly as if 
they had been practising it for years. I 
suppose that was where their tendencies 
came in. 

A few days later they had another 
experience — or at least one of them did. 
Their mother happened to see two little 
wood-mice run under a small, half-decayed 
log, 'and she put her forefeet against it 
and rolled it half-way over. Then, while 
she held it there, the larger kitten — the 
one who had made the better record the 
day they first left the hole in the tree — 
thrust his paw under and grabbed one of 
them. The other mouse got away, but I 



A Kitten of the Woods 211 

don't think the kitten cared very much. 
He had made his first kill, and that was 
glory enough for one day. 

After the kittens had learned to catch 
wood-mice they progressed to chipmunks, 
and from them to larger game. With use 
and exercise their soft baby muscles grew 
hard and strong. Before long they could 
follow the old lynx almost anywhere, to 
the tops of the tallest trees, over the 
roughest ground, and through the densest 
thickets. And they learned other things 
besides how to walk and climb and hunt. 

Very early in life their mother taught 
them that they must obey promptly 
and without question. They learned, too, 
that sometimes it was absolutely neces- 
sary to keep perfectly still and not make 
the slightest sound. For instance, there 
was a time when the whole family lay 
sprawled out on a limb of a tree, fifteen 
or twenty feet up from the ground, and 
watched the land-looker go by. They were 



212 Forest Neighbors 

so motionless, and the grayish color of 
their fur matched so well with the bark 
of the tree, that he never saw them, 
although for a moment they were right 
over his head, and could have leaped to 
his shoulder as easily as not. 

In fact, the kittens were learning to 
take care of themselves. It was well 
indeed that they were, for one day their* 
mother was taken from them in a strange 
sad way. There was nothing they could 
do but cry and try to follow her, and at 
last they saw her pass out of sight, still 
looking back and calling to them pitifully. 
It was the river that carried her off, and 
it was a floating saw-log that she rode 
upon. And a very unwilling passenger 
she was. 

The trouble began with a steel 'trap, 
just as it did in their father's case. Not 
nearly so many traps are set in summer 
as in winter because an animal's fur is 
not so valuable in warm weather as in 



A Kitten of the Woods 213 

cold. The lynx's hair, for instance, was 
shorter and thinner than it had been in 
December and it had more red in it. But 
still there are a few traps at all seasons 
of the year, and somebody had set this 
one down by the edge of the water. It 
was not the Glimmerglass, but a branch 
of the Tahquamenon River. The trap was 
chained to a log that was imbedded in 
the mud. 

When the lynx first felt the grip of the 
trap on her leg she yelled and tore around 
just as her mate had done, while the 
kittens looked on in wonder and amaze- 
ment. They had seen their mother in 
many moods but never in one like this. 
But by and by she grew weary, and a 
little later it began to rain. She was soon 
soaking wet, and as the hours dragged on 
every ounce of courage and gumption 
seemed to ooze out of her. If the trapper 
had come then he would have found her 
very meek and limp. Possibly she would 



214 Forest Neighbors 

have been ready to fight him for her chil- 
dren's sake, but nothing else could have 
nerved her to it. But the trapper did not 
come. 

It rained very hard and it rained very 
long. In fact it had been raining most 
of the time for two or three days before 
the lynx found the trap. In a few more 
hours the Great Tahquamenon Swamp 
was as full of water as a soaked sponge, 
and the river was rising rapidly. 

The lynx was soon lying in a puddle, 
and to get out of it she climbed upon the 
log and stretched out on the w r et, brown 
bark. Still the river rose, and by and by 
the log began to stir in its bed, as if it 
were thinking of going on a voyage. At 
last, when she had been there nearly 
twenty-four hours, and w T as faint with 
hunger, it quietly swung out into the cur- 
rent and drifted away down stream. She 
was a fine swimmer and she promptly 
jumped overboard and tried to reach the 






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216 Forest Neighbors 

shore, but of course the chain stopped 
her. Weakened by fasting and weighted 
down by the trap, she came very near 
drowning before she could scramble up 
again over the end of the log and seat 
herself amidships. 

The kittens were hunting among the 
bushes, but she called to them in a tone 
that told them plainly that some new 
trouble had befallen her. They hurried 
down to the water's edge, and stood there, 
mewing piteously. She begged them to 
follow her, and after much persuasion 
the bigger and the bolder of the two 
plunged bravely into the water. But he 
didn't get far. It was very cold and very 
wet, and he wasn't used to swimming. 
Besides, the water got into his nose and 
made him sneeze, so that for a moment 
he forgot all about his mother and just 
turned around and hustled back for shore 
as fast as he could go. After that he fol- 



A Kitten of the Woods 217 

lowed along the bank, keeping as near 
her as he could. 

Once the log drifted in so close that the 
lynx thought she could jump ashore, and 
the kitten watched eagerly as she gath- 
ered herself for the spring. But the chain 
was too short, and she fell into the water. 
Her forepaw just grazed the grass tuft 
w r here the Kitten was standing, and for 
an instant she felt the blades slipping 
betw r een her toes. But the next moment 
she was swimming for the log again, and 
the Kitten was mewing his sympathy at 
the top of his voice. 

They journeyed on for nearly an hour 
longer, she on her prison-ship, and he on 
the land. Then, before either of them 
knew just what had happened, the little 
branch had emptied itself into the main 
stream of the Tahquamenon. They sud- 
denly realized that they were much farther 
apart than they had been at any time 
before. This new river w r as several times 



218 Forest Neighbors 

as broad as the one on which the voyage 
had begun. The wind was steadily carry- 
ing the lynx away from the shore, while 
the current bore her along to Lake Supe- 
rior. She was still calling to the Kitten, 
but her voice was growing fainter and 
fainter in the distance, and at last she 
passed out of his sight and hearing forever. 

And then, for the first time, he missed 
his brother. He had been so busy trying 
to follow his mother and in answering 
her calls that he had not noticed that 
the other kitten, who was always a little 
slower, had dropped behind. He searched 
and cried for him frantically, but he could 
not find him. Our friend was alone in 
the world. 

But the same river that had carried 
away his mother brought him a little com- 
fort. Down by the water's edge, cast up 
on the sand by a circling eddy, he found 
a dead fish. He ate it greedily, and felt 
better in spite of himself. It made a very 



A Kitten of the Woods 219 

large meal for a lynx of his size, and by 
the time he had finished it he began to feel 
drowsy. He picked out the dryest spot 
he could find, under the thick branches 
of a large hemlock tree, and curled himself 
up on the brown needles and went to sleep. 

The next day he had to hustle for a 
living, and the next it was the same, and 
the next, and the next. As the weeks and 
months went by it looked as if life would 
be little else than one long hustle — or 
perhaps a short one. In spite of all he 
could do there were times when he w^as 
very near starvation. But his mother's 
lessons were extremely helpful, and he was 
well armed for the chase. 

It would have been hard to find in all 
the woods any better teeth than his for 
the work of pulling a fellow creature to 
pieces. In front, on both the upper and 
lower jaws, were the chisel-shaped incisors. 
Beside them were the canines, very long 
and slender, and very sharply pointed. 



220 Forest Neighbors 

They thrust themselves into the meat like 
the tines of a carving fork, and tore it 
away in great shreds. And back of the 
canines were other teeth that were still 
larger, but shorter and broader, and shaped 
more like notched knife-blades. The teeth 
of the lower jaw w r orked inside the upper 
jaw, and the kitten found them very handy 
for cutting the large chunks into pieces 
small enough to go down his throat. By 
the time he got through with a partridge 
there was not much left of it but a pile 
of brown feathers. 

The Kitten's claws, too, were very long 
and wiiite and very wickedly curved. 
Before starting out on a hunt he would 
often get up on his hind legs and sharpen 
the claws of his forefeet on a tree-trunk, 
just as your house-cat sharpens hers on 
the leg of the kitchen table. When he 
wasn't using his claws he kept them hid- 
den between his toes, so that they would 
not catch and break on roots and things. 



A Kitten of the Woods 221 

All he had to do when he wanted to use 
them was to pull certain muscles, and 
out they came, ready to scratch and tear 
as hard as he wished. They were not full 
grown yet, but it looked as if they would 
be as large as his father's some day. 

The Kitten was warmly and comfortably 
clothed, of course. Along his sides and 
flanks the hair hung especially thick and 
long, to protect his body when he had to 
wade through light, fluffy snow. When 
there was a crust he didn't need it, for 
his paws were so big and broad and hairy 
that at such times they held him up almost 
as well as if they had been two pairs of 
snow-shoes. 

But although Nature had provided for 
him so well, it was lucky for the Kitten 
that his first winter was a mild one — mild, 
that is, for the Glimmerglass country. 
There were days when he was even 
hungrier than his mother had been the 
night she serenaded the land-looker. It 



222 Forest Neighbors 

was on one of these occasions that he 
found a porcupine in a tree and tried to 
make a meal of him. That was an expe- 
rience to be remembered. 

The porky was sitting in a crotch, doing 
nothing in particular, and when the Kitten 
came near he simply put his nose down 
and his tail up. A porcupine's nose is 
his tenderest spot, and when any danger 
threatens he covers it with his paws. He 
doesn't care what happens to the rest of 
him. The Kitten spat at him contemptu- 
ously, but without effect. Then he put 
out a big forepaw and tapped him lightly 
on the forehead. The porcupine flipped 
his tail warningly, and the Kitten jumped 
back, and spat and hissed harder than 
ever. He didn't quite know what to make 
of this queer looking creature. But he 
was young and rash, and besides awfully, 
awfullv hungry. In another minute he 
pitched in. 

The next thing they knew, the porcupine 



A Kitten of the Woods 223 

had dropped to the ground, where he lit 
in a snow-bank. Presently he picked him- 
self up and waddled off to another tree. 
The Kitten — w^ell, the Kitten just sat in 
the crotch and cried as hard as ever he 
could cry. There were quills in his nose, 
and quills in his side, and quills in both 
his f orepaws ; and every motion was agony. 
He never knew exactly how he got rid of 
them all. A few of those that were caught 
only by their very tips may possibly have 
dropped out. It is probable that most 
of them broke off and left their points 
to work deeper and deeper into the flesh 
until the skin closed over them and they 
disappeared. I have no doubt that pieces 
of those quills are still wandering about in 
various parts of his body. It was weeks 
before he ceased to feel the pain of them. 
For several days after his meeting with 
the porcupine the Kitten could not hunt. 
He would certainly have starved to death 
if it had not been for a cougar who came 



224 Forest Neighbors 

to the Glimmerglass for a short visit. The 
kitten found his tracks in the snow and 
cautiously followed them up, limping as 
he went, to see what the big fellow had 
been doing. For a mile or more the large 
round foot-prints — very like his own, but 
on a bigger scale — were spaced very regu- 
larly. It was evident the cougar had sim- 
ply been walking along at a leisurely gait, 
with nothing to disturb his frame of mind. 
But after a while the track showed a 
remarkable change. The footprints w r ere 
only a few inches apart, and the cougar 
had carried himself so low that his body 
had dragged in the snow and left a deep 
furrow behind. The Kitten knew what 
that meant. He had been .there himself, 
though not after the same kind of animal. 
And then the trail stopped entirely, and 
the snow lay fresh and untrodden. But 
twenty feet away was the spot where the 
cougar had come down on all fours, only 
to leap forw r ard again like a flying cannon- 



A Kitten of the Woods 225 ' 

ball. Twenty-five feet farther on lay the 
greater part of the carcass of a deer. 

The Kitten stuffed himself as full as he 
could and then climbed a tree and watched. 
About midnight the cougar appeared. 
After he had eaten all he wanted and 
gone away again the Kitten slipped down 
and ate some more. He was making up 
for lost time. 

For the next four nights the cougar 
came and feasted on venison, but after 
that the Kitten never saw or heard any- 
thing of him again. There was still a 
goodly quantity of meat left, and it seems 
somewhat curious that he did not return 
for it. But he was a stranger in those 
parts, and it is probable that he went back 
to his old haunts. Anyhow, it was very 
nice for the Kitten, since that deer kept 
him in provisions until he was able to 
take up hunting once more. 

One day during that period he had a 
rather exciting experience. Just as he w x as 



226 Forest Neighbors 

finishing a fine meal of venison tenderloin 
he heard the tramp of snow-shoes on the 
crust. In a moment more that same land- 
looker came through the woods, running 
a section line, and stopped right in front 
of him. 

Now there are trappers who say that 
the Canada lynx is a fool and a coward, 
that he will run from a small dog, and that 
he makes his living by killing animals that 
are weaker and more poorly armed than 
he. Of course, most lynxes don't go ram- 
bling around the woods with chips on their 
shoulders, looking for hunters armed with 
bowie-knives and repeating rifles. You 
wouldn't either — not as long as there 
were rabbits to be had for the stalking. 

But on this occasion the Kitten was 
certainly reckless if not really brave. 
Since he didn't know anything about land- 
looking, he naturally supposed that the 
man had come for his deer. And he wasn't 
going to let him have it. He considered 



A Kitten of the Woods 227 

that that venison belonged to him, and he 
took his stand on the carcass, and spit 
and growled and snarled. 

The land-looker did not quite know what 
to do. His section line lay straight across 
the deer's body, and he did not want to 
leave it for fear of losing his count, but 
the Kitten, though only half grown, looked 
uncommonly business-like. He had no gun, 
not even a revolver, for he was not hunt- 
ing for fresh meat but for pine-trees. He 
had left his half-axe in camp, and when 
he felt for his jack-knife even that was 
not there. Then he looked about for a 
club. He had been told that lynxes had 
very thin skulls, and that a light blow on 
the back of the head was enough to kill 
the biggest and fiercest of them, let alone 
a kitten. But there was no stick near at 
hand that would answer for the purpose. 

" Well," he said, when they had stared 
at each other a minute or two longer and 
the Kitten was still growling, " I suppose 



228 Forest Neighbors 

if you won't turn out for me I'll have to 
turn out for you." Then he walked around 
the lynx respectfully, at some distance, 
picked up his line again, and went on his 
way. 

The winter dragged on very slowly with 
many ups and downs, but it was gone at 
last. Summer was easier, if only because 
it was warmer. Sometimes, indeed, the 
Kitten was really too warm for comfort, 
so he presently changed his coat and put 
on a thinner one. 

People like to talk about the coolness of 
the deep woods, but the truth is that there 
isn't any place much hotter and stuffier 
than a dense growth of timber. The wind 
never comes there and the air is always 
heavy and still. And then there are the 
old burnings and windfalls. Here the sun 
beats fiercely down among the fallen trees 
till the blackened soil is as hot as a city 
pavement. Here dead tree trunks and half 
burned logs lie thrown together in the 



A Kitten of the Woods 229 

wildest confusion. These places even land- 
lookers avoid whenever they can, but a 
cat will thread them as easily as a locomo- 
tive follows the rails. These were the 
localities which the Kitten liked best, and 
here his youth slipped rapidly away. He 
was fast becoming a full-grown lynx. 

A summer passed and half the autumn; 
the first snow came and went. Again the 
Kitten put on his winter coat of gray, with 
the white underneath and the dark trim- 
mings up and down his legs and along his 
back. With his mustachios and whiskers 
and the tassels on his ears he was a very 
handsome young lynx. It would be years 
before he could hope to be as large and 
powerful as his father, but still he was 
doing very well. 

Since his mother had left him he had 
seen only a few lynxes, and those were all 
much older and larger than he and not well 
suited to be his companions. But one 
Indian-summer afternoon he was tramping 



230 Forest Neighbors 

along the Northern bank of the Glimmer- 
glass, and as he rounded a bend in the 
path he came face to face with a stranger, 
who looked enough like him to have been 
his twin sister. They stood looking at each 
other in wonder and surprise. Just then 
they both heard something. A faint 
" Quack, quack, quack, " came up from the 
lake. With one impulse they crept to the 
edge of the bank, side by side, and looked 
down. 

Above them the trees stood dreamily 
motionless in the mellow sunshine. Below 
was a steep slope of ten or fifteen feet. 
Beyond it was a tiny strip of sandy beach, 
and then the quiet water. A flock of wild 
ducks, on their way from the Arctic Circle 
to the Gulf, had taken stop-over checks for 
the Glimmerglass. They were loitering 
among the dead bulrushes, murmuring 
gently, in soft, mild voices, of delicious 
minnows and snails. They paused a 
moment now and then to put their heads 



A Kitten of the Woods 231 

under and dabble in the mud for some 
particularly choice morsel. 

The lynxes crouched and waited while 
their stubby tails twitched nervously. The 
long narrow pupils of their eyes grew still 
narrower. Their paws fumbled about 
among the dry pine-needles, feeling for 
the very best footing for a flying leap. 

The ducks came on, still prattling pleas- 
antly over their own private affairs. Closer 
and closer they swam, without a thought of 
death waiting for them at the top of the 
bank. Suddenly four splendid sets of 
muscles jerked like bow-strings and four 
long hind-legs straightened with a mighty 
thrust and shove. Two big gray creatures 
shot out from the brink and came sailing 
down through the air with their heads up, 
their tails on end, their eyes blazing, and 
their fore-paws stretched out to grab the 
nearest duck. The flock broke up with 
frightened cries and a wonderful whirring 



232 Forest Neighbors 

of wings. In a moment they were far 
away and going like the wind. 

But two of the ducks stayed behind, and 
presently the lynxes w r aded out on the 
beach and sat down to their supper 
together. They talked as much over that 
meal as the ducks had over theirs, but the 
lynx language is very different from that 
of the water-fowl. Instead of soft gentle 
murmurings there were low growls and 
snarls as the long, white claws and teeth 
tore the w^arm red flesh from the bones. 
It could hardly have been a pleasant con- 
versation to anyone but themselves, but I 
suppose they enjoyed it as much as the 
choicest repartee. 

The lynxes had good reason to be satis- 
fied and contented with themselves and 
with what they had just done, for not 
every flying leap is so successful and not 
every duck is as plump and juicy as the 
two they were discussing. So they talked 
on in angry, threatening tones, that 



A Kitten of the Woods 233 

sounded like quarrelling, but that really 
meant only a fierce, savage kind of pleas- 
ure. When the meal was ended, and the 
very last shred of duck flesh had disap- 
peared, they washed their faces, and 
purred, and lay still awhile to visit and 
get acquainted. 

And so it happened that, over a catch 
of wild ducks, the Kitten first met the lynx 
who became his mate. They spent most of 
their days together that fall and had some 
very happy hours. Perhaps the best were 
those of the clear, sharp days of early 
winter, when the sky was blue, and the 
sunshine was bright, and a thin carpet of 
fine, dry snow covered the floor of the 
forest. It was cold, of course; but they 
were young and strong and healthy, and 
did not mind it. The keen air set their 
live blood leaping and dancing. They 
frisked and frolicked, and romped and 
played, and rolled each other over and 
over in the snow, and w^ere as wildly 



234 Forest Neighbors 

and deliciously happy as it is ever given to 
animals to be. 

But it was too good to last long without 
some kind of an interruption. One glori- 
ous winter evening, when the full moon was 
flooding the woods with the white light that 
brings a touch of madness, the Kitten got 
into a fight with a third young lynx that 
came upon the scene. He and his enemy 
squatted face to face in the snow, and 
sassed each other to the utmost limits of 
the lynx vocabulary. Their voices rose 
and fell in a hideous duet, and their eyes 
gleamed and glowed with a pale, yellow- 
green light. 

Presently there was a rush, and the fur 
began to fly. The snow flew, too; and the 
woods rang and rang again with yelling 
and caterwauling, and spitting and swear- 
ing, and all manner of abuse. The rabbits 
heard it and trembled; and the partridges 
down in the cedar swamp glanced fur- 
tively over their shoulders and were glad 















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236 Forest Neighbors 

it was no nearer. They bit and scratched 
and clawed like the two big cats they 
were. First one was on top and then the 
other. Now our Kitten had his enemy by 
the ear and now by the tail. One minute 
heads, legs, and bodies were all mixed up 
in such a snarl that it seemed as if they 
could never be untangled. The next they 
backed off just long enough to catch their 
breath, and then flew- at each other's 
throats more savagely than ever. 

It was regally quite difficult for either of 
them to get a good hold of the other. Their 
fur was very thick and Nature had pur- 
pose^ 7 made their skins very loose, because 
of just such ..;. fights as this. Still they 
managed to do a great deal of damage. But 
in the end the pretender was thoroughly 
whipped, and he fled away in disgrace 
down the long, snowy aisles of the forest, 
while the Kitten walked slowly off to find 
his mate. His ears were slit; one eye was 
shut and the lid of the other hung very 



A Kitten of the Woods 237 

low; he limped badly with his right hind 
leg, and many were the wounds and 
scratches along his breast and sides. But 
he didn't care. He had won his first fight! 
The story of the Kitten is told, for he 
had proved his bravery and was a kitten 
no longer. 



